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

ESSAYS-LECTURES - J. Antall: Absolutism and Liberalism in Health Policy in Hungary (in English)

ments for the Italian and the German unity, only here the main obstacle of the creation of the nation-state was not disunity but dependence [2], Perhaps it is hardly surprising then that even among the physicians of that period, not the "researching type", but the "public figure" became dominant. The teeming spiritual and political atmosphere, the passing of the reforms was more favourable for people moving on the forum than for specialist researchers. The true merit of this second generation is the creation of a special Hungarian medical language, the foundation of scientific societies and reviews [3]. Those physicians who liked the public forum and who wanted to play some role in the social and cultural life of the country established the Budapesti Orvosegyesület (Budapest Medical Association) in 1837, the Itinerary Congresses of Hungarian Physicians and Naturalists [4], and the Természettudomáyi Társulat (Natural Science Association) in 1841. These medical-scientific associations had special importance, as the Hungarian Academy of Sciences founded by István Széchenyi in 1825 gave home mostly to the humanities, and even within the natural sciences was concerned mostly with linguistical questions. One could find physicians in all fields of public life, and their role had a secondary importance as well, namely that they influenced the approach of the leading politicians to the question of public health. THE EMERGENCE OF THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF PEST The teeming political and cultural atmosphere of the Age of Reforms was the basic historical factor which facilitated the emergence of an independent Hungarian medical school within the fight for the establishment of the nation-state, for the bourgeois transformation of society. But it was not less important, in fact it became important just in that connection, that the effects of international development in the sciences also got across. The great contradiction of the first part of the 19th century lies actually in the fact that it saw rapid economic development and the progress of science, while in politics the reactionary system of the Holy Alliance prevailed. This contradiction broke out in the revolutions of 1848. The rapid progress of the natural sciences started in the century of the enlightenment, and in the first part of the 19th century it already made its dominant effect in all branches of learning. In medical science both the theoretical and the clinical branches show great development. The role of pathological anatomy and physical diagnostics, which started on their victorious course in France and became the backbone of the second Viennese school through the persons of Rokitansky and Skoda, have a special significance. The employment of new methods of examination, and the new technical devices (stethoscope, ophthalmoscope etc.) meant a great leap forward. In the 1840s the interests of the best were already concentrated on the causes of the illnesses and the fight against them, that is on causality in theory and on prevention (prophylaxis) in pratice. In short the theory and practice of medical thinking underwent a revolutionary change. 149