Kapronczay Károly szerk.: Orvostörténeti Közlemények 182-185. (Budapest, 2003)
KÖZLEMÉNYEK - COMMUNICATIONS - MUZUR, Amir: Hungarian doctors and the „Golden Age" (1884-1914) of Opatija (Croatia). (Magyar orvosok és Abbázia „aranykora") (1884-1914)
not allowed to expose their opinion without being asked for it by the elder, and neither to discuss vividly any topic. Szegö was publishing papers in a broad thematic range, from scrofulosis, convulsive cough, and children education to the policy of building up sanatoria in Hungarian Littoral. As a devoted patriot, he engaged himself in the war efforts and offered free accommodation in his sanatorium to 12 Austrian and 5 German recovering army officers. After the war, he acquired the new, Italian citizenship, but maintained the old, Austrian-Hungarian one. 8 Until 1924, he continued to direct the sanatorium which first was renamed Casa di cura Abbázia, and later, at the beginning of the 1930s, was transformed into an "ordinary" hotel, Grande albergo Belvedere (which name the institution is still nominated): before this occurred, however, the old Szegő had moved to the other world, by his own will. Hungarians used Opatija also as a test range for their new patents. If anyone has ever found "warm water," then this was the Opatija physician Géza Fodor (born in Pest in 1867, graduated at Medical Faculty in 1889). After several years at various German and Austrian clinics, this doctor's child became an assistant to Professor Frigyes Korányi, an assistantprofessor at Pest University (lecturing mainly on blood- and metabolism diseases), a consultant to the Hungarian State Railways and the Hungarian Royal Mail, and then arrived to Opatija. Fodor published in at least six journals and three languages, lived in Villa Fodor (also known as Villa Camilla, M. Tita 84). He was the vice-president of the Opatija Medical Association 9 and the president-founder of the Aquarius society (founded about 1884, the Aquarium Verein Abbázia aimed to explore maritime flora and fauna, and to that scope build an aquarium in 1911, next to the present hotel Imperial). 10 According to local history, however, Fodor first of all entered Opatija society by preparing a commercial cocktail of an attractive name —Marina, actually, simply a filtered, sterilised, and C0 2impregnated sea water. An entire philosophical-medical library was written about how to drink that water: how it should be treated, diluted, added to milk with a spoon; for how long it should be consumed, whether before or after a meal; how it works at diarrhea when it is taken warm, or, in other cases, at room temperature; how it is especially efficient at diabetes and tuberculosis, etc. In the summertime, an office was waiting for Dr. Géza Fodor in Stoosz, Hungary, while his trace ends in Opatija around the Great War: he would be working in Zagreb, as a State Railways Direction physician, until his death in 1927." Another elixir was launched by yet another Hungarian, the pharmacist Béla Erényi, born in 1872 in Nagyvárad (presently Oradea in Rumania). Erényi graduated in 1893 in Budapest, acquired there his own pharmacy, hired it out and invested into a new pharmacy. He worked in the Trencin (Trencsén) bath (now Slovakia), arrived to Opatija after the First World War and opened a pharmacy there at hotel Residenz. He named his medicinal brandy Diana Franzbranntwein, after the name of the pharmacy in Pest he had once worked in. Béla Erényi died in Budapest in 1935. 12 8 DAR [Rijeka State Archives]. JU-8, box 74. 9 Szinnyei: o.e. 10 De Canziani Jaksic, Theodor. Povijest akvarija u Rijeci i Opatiji [A history of the aquaria in Rijeka and Opatija]. Rijeka: Prirodoslovni muzej Rijeka / Drzavni arhiv u Rijeci, 2002/2003, 9. 11 Fried, K. "Staleske vijesti," Lijecnicki vjesnik 48, no. 6 (1927) 207. 12 Gulyás: o.e.
