Magyar László szerk.: Orvostörténeti Közlemények 174-177. (Budapest, 2001)

KÖZLEMÉNYEK — COMMUNICATIONS - Kapronczay Károly: A short history of the urology in Hungaiy. — (A magyarországi urológia rövid története.)

tis or cystitis or peritonitis but no fistula or urinous infiltration declared itself in any case though these were frequent concomitants of such operations at that time. Later 5 of the 30 cases of lithotripsy became fatal. According to the results of the dissections performed by Balassa, the cause of death was tuberculosis in one case, uraemia in another and an advanced change of kidney in the rest three. Balassa performed 149 vesical operations and 43 lithotripsies during his whole practice until 1868. According to another of his essays he did a pioneering work in the Hungarian relation in the field of solving urethral stricture proving that it was not of spastic origin as it was claimed by the contemporary special literature of medicine. Middeldorf, a surgeon from Breslau (Wroclaw) applied galvanocautery as the best instrument of prompt surgical interventions first in 1856. János Balassa performed an operation with a galvanocaustic radio-knife as early as 10th May 1859 removing a cancerous penis which was considered a rarity at that time even in the European relation. He recommended radio-knife for the operations accompanied by the great risk of bleeding because it served not only for the promptness of surgical interventions but also for guarding against the risk of bleeding. He was engaged in urethral plastics, ceasing of phimoses and removal of tumours. To give an overall picture of the contemporary Hungarian urology it is necessary to mention that lithotripsies, cystotomies and lesser or greater plastic operations were performed with good results in other Hungarian surgical wards too. For instance in 1861 the Orvosi Hetilap (Medical Weekly Paper) made known that in Kecskemét in 1855 János Helle, the chief medical officer of the district of Kiskunság (Little Cumania, a district in Central Hungary) had sutured a 25-year-old man's penis back on with full success (that had been snipped off before by the husband of the man's lover in a tavern bawl) after which the patient had recovered entirely. Once during the treatment, urine infiltration declared itself that was solved by sticking an elastic catheter up into the urinary bladder. The place of the operation was dressed with coal dust and turpentine oil. After János Balassa's death the direction of his department of surgery was taken over by József Kovács (1832—1887). Under his leadership the department moved into a new building, its medical staff was growing and could work under better conditions than before. József Kovács was János Balassa's fit follower, though his surgical ideas were very conservative as compared with his contemporaries'. He followed his master's urological surgical practice and performed 682 urological operations in the 30 years of his leadership. His regulations for cleanliness and wound treatment, kept under extremely strict control, played a great part in the recoveries notwithstanding that he did not adopt Lister's procedure for wound disinfecting. János Balassa performed median lithotomy in 192 cases. In 25 years József Kovács did the same in 377 cases and performed lithotripsy in 270 cases. Jónás Baron, a surgeon of József Kovács

's department, often referred to József Kovács'

s practice, mainly his urological surgical cases in the annotations and complements of Konrad Heitzmann's monograph translated from German into Hungarian, entitled A sebészet kórtana és gyógytana alapvonalai (The Outlines of the Pathology and Therapy of Surgery). In 1884 Imre Réczey compiled a jubilee almanac that raised a monument to the memory of József Kovács's professorial activity lasting 25 years. In the book the authors gave a detailed account of József Kovács's clinical urological operations, the applications of hypospadias-catheters and epispadias-catheters and the methodology of the appliance of in-