Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 55-56. (Budapest, 1970)

TANULMÁNYOK - Benedek, István: The Illness and Death of Semmelweis (angol nyelvű közlemény)

THE ILLNESS AND DEATH OF SEMMELWEIS by ISTVÁN BENEDEK Tn my monograph Semmelweis és kora (Semmelweis and his Time) (1) I have collected all data and opinion available, have told my views and arguments, and have tried to refute the views opposing me. I deem it unnecessary to repeat that all over again. Below, therefore, I shall sum up the questions debated, expound my viewpoint with a brief reasoning, and for the details I shall refer to the monograph. Concerning the illness and the death of Semmelweis the major questions under discussion are the following: 1. Did he suffer from constitutional mental disturbance? If yes, what was it? 2. Did he suffer from chronic, organic illness of the nervous system? If yes, what was it? 3. What was the immediate cause of his death? 1. PSYCHOPATHY In my opinion there is no symptom or evidence for Semmelweis having suffered from constitutional mental disturbance. His whole life shows it clearly that he was a psychopathic personality. He was tormented, irritable, hot-tempered, monomaniacly clinging to his own sphere of thought, in consequence quarrelsome even with his friends, rash in his judgement on those who looked unfavourably upon his hypothesis, often coarse. His psychopathic behaviour was striking especially in the sixties, when he worked himself up into a frenzy about debating. Markusovszky notes about that period that his manners became unbearable even within the circle of his friends : they dreaded his passionate strom in defending his assertions, reviling his supposed or real oppenents, and ranging even his best-wishers among his enemies. In his polemical essays he did not refrain himself from using the most extreme personal insults, which in many cases were even not justified; he could not weigh his words. He preached his doctrine as "solely true", "true for ever", and in order to prove it he fell into constant repetition. His passion did not allow him to see the limits of the statistical approach, he kept on producing one statistical table after the other, which had already ceased to prove the thesis. At the same