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 - G. Buzinkay: Sanitary References in Kelemen Mikes's Letters from Turkey (in English)

with the country and who will not leave their nation and heritage for a reason resembling smoke. Heaven grant that no one will ever follow us, and let him shudder at hearing the story of our long banishment. But are we the first examples

, my dear aunt ? Ay, no. Have we learnt from the others' example? No. Will others learn from our example? No. But why not? Because people were, are, and will be led to the state that we are in, by the same reasons, at all times" [10]. As several of his letters testify, he is occassionally struck by the feeling of home-sickness, or rather we can say: he takes the pen in his hand when he feels the pain of loneliness and being hopelessly far from his country. This feeling, however, does never become a lasting state of mind and does never return in the following letters. In these mental difficulties, he was given help first by the company of the prince whom he loved dearly and that of the leaders of the war of independence, then by mere habit. ANECDOTES AND ILLNESSES As in the whole material of the letters, in their medical references too, two layers can be distinguished. The anecdote-like story and the material taken from cultural sources can clearly be separated from his own genuine experiences. For instance, of the ears and legs of the Chinese, the Roman physicians, or the circumcision of Mohammedans he speaks as if he were telling anecdotes. In his anger, when the only girl in the exile he could have married, the rather plain Zsuzsi Kőszegĥÿ, <gzvz her hand to the old but relatively rich Count General Miklós Bercsényi rather than to him, Mikes compiled a calendar mockingly: "... a calendar for the old man who has a young wife, about how to keep his health and on which days and at what times he should sleep with his wife and on what particular days he shouldn't" [11]. At another time he was thinking about the healthy way of life and that why working people and friars live a long life. Their health and long life he put to the credit of their sobriety. All these are of only indirect medical concern. It happens that he decribes real cases in literary form, like the joke of the fugitive German musketeers at the time of the plague in 1739, which rivals a story by Boccaccio not only in its spiciness but also in its quality. We are more interested in those reports of his which are about himself and his companions in exile, or about health conditions and contemporary Turkish customs. His data referring to the prince, Ferenc Rákóczi II, are the most significant in quantity as well as this subject is elaborated best in special literature and also in the field of medical history [12]. He tells of the prince right in the first passage of his first letter, and from that time on the symptoms of his gout interested Mikes every time as much as the smallest detail of his coming death. Yet the cause of the prince's death cannot be stated today, on the basis of neither his description nor the result of the post-mortem examination [13], though according to an eye-witness "he died of overflow of the bile [14]". Mikes commemorates the death of every other important man in the exile.