Varga Benedek szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 149-157. (Budapest, 1996)

KISEBB KÖZLEMÉNYEK / ESSAYS - Kapronczay Károly: A gyógyító röntgensugár alkalmazása Magyarországon

* SUMMARY The paper summarizes the applications of X-Ray technology in Hungarian medical practice. First X-ray photos were taken as early as February 1896 in Budapest by the two famous physicists Jenő Klupáthy and Baron Loránd Eötvös. The possible medical application of X-ray photos were soon presented by Endre Hőgyes in a lecture (January 18th 1896) in which he pointed out how helpful X-Ray photos could be for indicating broken bones and bone fractures. Soon after Gyula Dollinger presented another paper about classifying the position of a bullet in the human body. The first medical X-Ray laboratory was set up by Károly Pongó Kiss, on the premises of the Technical University. The pictures of this lab included some taken of the heart, and the liver, which were published in the Lancet in 1896. The physician Béla Alexander, whose contribution to three dimensional X-Ray photos was a breakthrough in advanced X-Ray photo technology, was one his pupil. Regarding hospitals the first X-Ray lab was probably organised in 1898 in the Pozsony State Hospital (today Bratislava in Slovakia) by József Pantocsek. A few days later Gyula Dollinger opened his lab at the First Surgical Clinic at the University of Budapest. The oldest hospital in Budapest, the Saint Rochus Hospital received a considerable fund from the City Magistrate for a Roentgen laboratory in the same year. This lab was the most modern among all in Hungary, and beside diagnostics it was the first to be used for therapies as well. Adolf Stein was the first physician who worked exclusively as a radiologist. Baron Frigyes Korányi whose medical career were characterised by his efforts against tuberculoses, soon realised the importance of radiology in tb diagnosis. The Queen Elisabeth Sanatorium, opened in 1901 in Budakeszi, was both an excellent hospital in tb patients care, and a national centre for medical research. This Sanatorium (today called as Frigyes Korányi Sanatorium) successfully promoted opening pneumonographic laboratories for chest examination on a nation wide basis: by 1910 there were 59 examination centres in the country. The military sanitary services had their own network of pneumonographic labs, which included all bigger military hospitals. In 1935 the capital set up the Loránd Eötvös Radiology and Roentgen Institute for cancer therapy which two decades later was increased as the National Institute for Oncology (1951).