Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 55-56. (Budapest, 1970)
TANULMÁNYOK - Regöly-Mérei, Gyula: The Pathological Reconstruction of Semmelweis's Disease on the Basis of the Catamnestic Analysis and Palaeopathological Examination (angol nyelvű közlemény)
letters, words as well as the space between two lines is broad, but there are manyerasures and interpolations, (e.g. Fig, 1). The characteristic feature of his signature is extremely important. Graphology holds that signatures without flourishes express, among others, common-sense and sincerity in the writer's professions, such were, for example, the signatures of Einstein and Freud (71). It should be added that according to Klages's experiences (32), handwritings are not repeated with mathematical precisity. Handwritings used on various occasions are generally not uniform; people who pursue a mental profession have in addition to their writing applied for lasting purposes, a rough-and-ready tracing and types of letters for making notes. The illegible handwriting of physicians is a standing joke. In the manuscripts of Semmelweis generally an improvised so-to-say flung down character prevails. The smudgy writing mentioned by Benedek (7) is not a pathological sign, for it is due to the splashing of the pen tracing deep lines; it certainly points to carelessness and is observable in his earlier writings too e.g. in the letter written to Markusovszky (1847 or 1848?), the judicial expertice produced together with Arányi (after 1861), the report from 1857, the marginal notes to the Siebold article and elswhere too, and is, therefore, not a characteristic feature of the "catalogue notes". Now let us look into the spelling mistakes Benedek has pointed to (7). Such are to be found in fact e.g. "füszet" instead "füzet," "fölira" instead "fölirat," "természetrajz" instead of "természetrajz" etc., moreover punctation-marks, full stops and commas are missing. The ancestors of Semmelweis lived in Hungary in the XVI. century already. József, the father of Semmelweis moved (1806) to Buda (Antall 2). The Semmelweis family and their friendly circle, Buda burghers, spoke at home German—as it was customary at the beginning of the last century — although they spoke Hungarian too; for example, the mourning-card oîSemmelwies's father written in Hungarian. They were Hungarians at heart. The two brothers, Károly (1844) a canon and Fülöp (1849) a merchant, the widow and children of Semmelweis (Margit, Béla and Antonia, 1879) magyarized their name to Szemerényi. Semmelweis was entered in the register of the secondary school as "Hungarus" and was a member of the Hungary colony in Vienna. When he was appointed a professorship in Pest (now Budapest), the report of the Ministry of Education (July 4th 1855, E. Lesky) and the annexed "Competenten Tabelle" (E. Lesky ) emphasized his knowledge of the Hungarian language. In the letter written to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1860) he named Hungary his fatherland. On the margin of Siebold's in German written article (Neue Zeitschrift für Geburtshilfe ; Semmelweis Museum, Budapest) he made glosses in Hungarian. To which people a person pertains to does not only depend upon his birth-place, origin and knowledge of the language but first and foremost upon his feelings. Semmelweis attended Hungarian schools, but delivered only a part of his lectures in Hungarian; however, his letters, reports and other writings (Antall and collaborators, 3) show his perfect command of the Hungarian language. The same, however, cannot be said about his spelling. The pronounciation of
