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)

true for his follower's Peter Bod's work, the Magyar Athenas (Hungarian Athenas), published in 1766 and written already in Hungarian. These are the basic sources by the help of which István Weszprémi (1723—1799), physicist of Debrecen has written, based, of course, on his own most detailed researches, the first Hungarian medical biobibliography, striving for completeness. The Succinta medicorum Hungáriáé et Transilvaniae biographia had first been published in three parts, four volumes, in Leipzig and then in Vienna in 1774—1787. Weszprémi*s great influence on medical research of his time and also how highly his work had been appreciated abroad, is best illustrated by the postscript of the Viennese publisher in Volume IV. Accordingly, Weszprémi has meant for Hungary, what meant A. F

. Hamberger to Germany, professor of anatomy at the University of Jena, having founded the Gelehrten Zeitung (Journal of Scientists) of Jena (in 1749). Weszprémi's great, still unpublished correspondence is well proving his relationship to Van Swieten [1]. We shall return to the historical importance of this relationship. The study of medicohistory of a not solely biographic character in Hungary had really started only by the survey of the history of the single medical disciplines and only much later had it been continued by general medicohistory. This is then followed by the specialized elaboration of the slowly differenciá iñg disciplines of medicohistory, such as that of spas, hospitals, pharmaceutics, veterinary science, etc. The first scholar on a university level of medicohistory in a wider sense, had been Vencel Trnka, professor of European fame of the faculty of Nagyszombat who, related to his lectures delivered at the university has also disclosed the historical relations systematically of his special fields, i.e. anatomy, pathology and physiology. These were included also in his monographs. As regards this fact, we are of the opinion that Tibor Győry had been wrong by writing that: **Vencel Trnka had written not less than 11 independent books of medicohistory ..." (quoted by the authors) [2]. The books quoted and bearing in their title the word "história", render the entire and detailed survey of a disease or pathological state (rickets, tetanus, amaurosis, etc.) as to both pathological and clinical points of view, in the knowledge of the newest literature. In the first part of these books, Trnka is describing excellently the history of the pathological forms, i.e. that of pathological states and diseases. This chapter is, however, only one, sometimes insignificant part of the book. So, for instance, in the work of 339 pages, História Rachitidis (Vienna 1787), only the first 20 pages deal with the history of rickets [3]. Trnka's this kind of activity represents in Hungary the transition on hand of which in the second half of the 18th century, medicohistory, as an independent discipline of the 19th century had developed from the slowly separating historical introductions of the entire medicine, i.e. from the parallelism discussed in the clinical part. This development, as also clinical progress, ultima analysi, can be led to Boerhaave

. The eclecticism of the Leyden-school which took advantage of the manyfoldedness of medical systems had shown great interest towards those of medicine of the antique world. Thus, therapeutic and diagnostic development and clinical progress have been linked to several historical views, the latter being 14