J. Antall szerk.: Medical history in Hungary. Presented to the XXII. International Congress for the History of Medicine / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 4. (Budapest, 1970)

MEDICAL HISTORY IN HUNGARY - E. Schultheisz L. Tardy: Summing-up of the Past and Present of Hungary's Medicohistorical Research Work (in English)

MEDICAL HISTORY IN HUNGARY SUMMING-UP OF THE PAST AND PRESENT OF HUNGARY'S MEDICOHISTORICALRESEARCH WORK by EMIL SCHULT HEISZ and LAJOS TARDY "X/Tedical science, as an independent discipline, was born by the 19th century; up to that time, it had been an integral part of medicine. Physicians have been induced only by rationalism and positivism to discuss and, so-to-say, to rebuild medical science anew in text books and other works, ignoring entirely any historical basis and preliminaries. Up to then, with varied intensity, the subject discussed had been lectured together with its preliminaries at the medical faculties. And as to literature, in some works medical past,—sometimes on purpose,—obtained a bigger role than medicine of the epoch, these may thus be regarded to a certain degree, works of medical history. Investigating the history of medicine, i.e. that of medical historiography, it were not expediant to limit the present research sui generis to the science of medicohistory. It seems therefore suitable to take into account bibliographies and biographies, too, dealing with great personalities and of their important works, eventually only in the form of a taxative listing. I. The above statements, meant generally, are also true in all respect for the past of Hungarian medical historiography. Accordingly, the present paper has to start with the Hungarian humanistic medicohistorian, János Zsámboki (1531— 1584). His Icones Medicorum (Antwerpen, 1574) is a collection of portraits containing four-lined elogies praising outstanding physicians and philosophers. Zsámboki in the introduction of his work emphasizes that he took great care to keep to authencity in the reproduced portraits. His catalogue 4

4Bibliothecae clarissimi viri Joannis Sambuci Catalogus librorum" of his books and manuscripts kept at the Nationalbibliothek (National Library) of Vienna, may be regarded as the first Hungarian medical bibliography. Due to the known historical reasons, a new collection of biography and bibliography, also from the point of view of Hungarian medical historiography, is published only after one and a half centuries: David Czwittinger's Specimen Hungáriáé literatae virorum eruditione clarorum natione Hungarorum, published in 1711. In view that he interpretes the "writer" still rather vaguely, scientific and belletristic literature are both included into the subject literature, and so he also lists and evaluates Hungarian physicians of importance. This same is 13