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 - J. Antall: Museum Affairs Concerning Medical and Pharmaceutical History in Hungary (in English)

joint Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum and Library in particular? People are apt to speak of "a museum" whenever they see some old objects together, especially if they see old objects, instruments and documents together in an exhibition. The general public considers both a collection and an exhibition as a museum by itself, and regards collection or keeping as museum activities. In a historical perspective—as it is proved by our institute—such initiatives can indeed be included in the process of the formation of a museum, but a collection, an exposition does not make a museum in itself. Only scientific institutions which collect, keep, and process historical remnants and documents, and use them in the service of the dissemination of knowledge, can be considered a museum. There are disciplines that in the past (and partly even today) had been studied almost exclusively in museums, archeology, ethnography, art history, together with some of the branches of the natural sciences like palaeontology or zoology. Bearing the above in mind we are entitled to say that medical and pharmaceutical history, too, are partly such "museum sciences", their subject-matter can be found mainly in museums, in Hungary in our special museum. Therefore it is a vital prerequisite for medical and pharmaceutical historical research that there should be museum units at their disposal to give some background for the study of the subject. The development of medical historical museum affairs can be divided into two phases in effect. The first, when simply the objects of demonstration serving university training are kept in "the museums of the university institutes" (e.g. the Anatomical Institute). This can be traced back even to the 18th century, when the collections at the Buda and later the Pest university (indeed partly even those of Nagyszombat), were looked upon as a museum. In the course of its development more and more bequests, independent objects and collections found their way into the possession of the medical faculty. Step by step the museum collection of the university came into being as a by-product of the functioning of the university. Nevertheless it never grew into a proper medical historical museum like those of Vienna and Copenhagen. The second phase is when the medical historical museum is established with the definite purpose and character of a museum, e.g. the Wellcome Institute, or the Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum. These represent the true medical historical museum. After one or two private initiatives, when for instance a great physician bequeathes his properties to some institute to become a "household museum", such things occured only at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. We do not know how much the foreign example counted in the establishment of the Medical Historical Museum of the Association of Physicians (in 1905), and the Pharmaceutical Museum (in 1906), but it is a fact the most important similar institution of the world, the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum and Library in London was also set up in 1905. At the beginning of our century, in 1909, the Wellcome Institute published a work on Hungarian medical history in several languages. There are considerable medical and pharmaceutical historical museum and library collections in the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Poland, 26