Magyar László szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 133-140. (Budapest, 1991-1992)

TANULMÁNYOK — ESSAYS - Congratulation

CONGRATULATION In the name of our renewed editorial board and the author of this present volume I am greeting Józsej Antall, the former general-director of the Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum, Library, and Archives, the old colleague, the President of the Hungarian Medical Historical Society, the Vice President of the International Medical Historical Society, the editor of the Communicationes (since vol. 44,1967) and editor in-chief (vol. 80, 1976), at the occasion of his 60th birthday. It is a widely known fact that he dislikes celebrations with protocol, but probably he will forgive us this time, since 60 years is a measurable part of life. The greeting is due to a person who was able to profit his political talents during communist dictatorship in order to avoid the pitfalls of politics, and for making an institution and a professional field to an oasis without politics. During the first half of the 1960s he organized, with the contribution of others, the first real Hungarian medical historical museum, in the house where /. Ph. Semmelweis had been born. After a while our museum became a national institution, and was regarded as one of to the most respected museums in the country uniting all the three branches of public collections: museum, library and archives. Owing to his efforts we have achieved that the institution became a complex research base for medical and pharmaceutical history. It was united with the already existing National Medical Historical Library (1968), was enlarged with an independent exhibition on pharmaceutical history in the A rany Sas (Golden Eagle) Pharmacy-museum in Buda Castle ( 1974), and with the Józsej Ernyei Pharmaceutical Library, which was accommodated into the Neo-Renaissance rooms of the former Szent Keresztély (Saint Christian) pharmacy ( 1981 ), and eventually wit the Archives. We can suvely say that in the field of medical and pharmaceutical history we are regarded as a „great power" in the national and international group of researchers. As a new charge we organized the Frigyes Korányi Memorial Museum at the place where he had been born in Nagykálló, and due to our contribution independent medical pharmacy museums (Sopron, Székesfehérvár, Kőszeg, Kecskemét, Eger), and two working museum pharmacies (Győi, Pécs) have been opened, and we take our part in the preservation and professional conservation of protected furnitures of some 60 pharmacies. He used to be an editor, later editor-in-chief of the Communicationes (first issued in 1955), for about 24 years; he renewed this journal in its form and content. This year owing to his occupation as a prime minister he resigned the editorship, though preserved his membership in the editorial board. He always wanted to become a politician, a historian. Medical history was a substitute for this still, he spent 26 years, the prime time of his adult life in this field, and he worked successfully, Beside a number of lectures delivered in Hungary and abroad (universities, congresses) he organized with his colleagues the International MedicalHistorical Congress in 1974 in Budapest, the International Pharmaceutical-Historical Congress in 1981. His work was honoured with a couple of Hungarian and foreign recognition, with honorary fellowships of several scientific societies and academies. Today he is a historian again, he is trying to shape the history of our time, shouldering, as a prime minister, the most thankless and most difficult mission. His closest associates, his friends and pupils since we share his ideas and have similar lives we understand him, and the same „Substitute", the study of medical history, became our profession as well. We regard it as a duty to preserve to posterity all those he has started. We are greeting him on the 60th birthday and promise that we shall take care of his life-work, we shall raise its international reputation and safeguard our common work. Dr. Mária Vida Editor-in-Chief