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

KÖZLEMÉNYEK — COMMUNICATIONS - Tricot, Jean-Paul: The memory of today in the history of medicne. — (A ma emlékezete az orvostörténelemben.)

THE MEMORY OF TODAY IN THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE* JEAN-PIERRE TRICOT Mister Chairman, Mister National Delegate of Hungary at the International Society for the History of Medicine, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great honour and pleasure for me to be invited by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and by the Societas Hugarica Históriáé Artis Medicináé, especially in this beautiful old city of Budapest, which I had the opportunity to visit some eight years ago with a group of 35 Antwerpian historians of medicine. We were helped with the organization of this medicohistorical trip by Dr Piroska Ballér of the Institute of History of Medicine and of Social Medicine at the Semmelweis University of Medicine. We still keep excellent memories of it. I know Hungary has had a reputable tradition concerning the study of history of medicine and that for very many years. Every medical historian has to know the name of Weszprémi, father of medical Hungarian historiography with his opus magnum Succincta medicorum Hungáriáé et Transilvaniae biographia. You had the first professor of the history of medicine at the University of Budapest, Merei-Schoepf in 1836, a long time before other European countries. The publications of Győry, Bókai, Mayer and Herczeg in the first half of the XXth century are of great value. And in the last decennia the contributions of Réti, Birtalan, Schultheisz, Vizi, Vida, Honti, Back and so many others are essential to our discipline. I wish to mention particularly József Antall, with whom I had a friendly relationship from the eighties until his death. We had discussions several times at the annual meetings of the International Society in Paris. He was the national delegate of your country as I was for Belgium until 1990. In that year I organised the XXXIInd International Congress for the Histoiy of Medicine and I became the general secretary of the society and proposed the nomination of Antall as vice-president of our society. Despite his official duties as prime minister he accepted immediately. I still preserve preciously a beautiful copper etching of Semmelweis, which he gave me as a testimony of our friendship. Belgium has also some other historical links with your country: in the XVIth century, but at different times, we were ruled by the same queen: Queen Mary of Hungary. You know she was born at the Couderberg Palace in Brussels in 1505, a daughter of Philip the * Paper presented on the session of the Hungarian Society for the History of Medicine, on 25th May, 2001.