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)

Fig. 1. the style of the age of Louis XVI. It was here that the grocery shop "White Elephant" of József Semmelweis, the father of the distinguished Hungarian physician was waiting for customers, here lived and was born "The Saviour of Mothers". The building, marked by a memorial tablet since 1906, was badly damaged in world war II and was restored between 1962—1964. Since then the stone-wall facing the entrance holds the disintered remains of Semmelweis

. ''Maternity" by Miklós Borsos, a sculpture of modern art, is standing in front of that. "PICTURES FROM THE PAST OF THE HEALING ARTS" As the title itself shows you haven't come to an exhibition which claims to offer a complete survey of medical history, we only try to illuminate some of the milestones of the many hundred years of the Aesculapian trade. Pictures recall primeval primitive curing and the practice of the ancient East. Medals, instruments, and vessels show the development of ancient Greece and Rome (Fig. 2.), then passing by the relics of the Islam and mediaeval Europe you can see an artistic ivory figure (Fig. 3.) an ancillary object used for teaching and training. Vesalius, Harvey, and their great contemporaries indicate the renaissance of medical science. Burning iron (Fig. 4.) trephines are proofs of the progress made in surgery and in medical practice in the 16th—17th centuries. At this time Hungary, torn into three parts in the devastating Turkish wars^ 34