Antall József szerk.: Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 5. (Budapest, 1972)

The Life of Ignác Semmelweis (1818-1865)

His result at school have to be appreciated all the more as he attended one of the best institutions of the country. A number of eminent students attended this school, e.g .József Eötvös, László Szalay, Lajos Arányi, etc). Their teachers were the best instructors of the age. Even if we bear in mind that the educational system was rather backward at that time, we have to refuse the rumour -spread both in Hungary and abroad -that Semmelweis was uneducated. Furthermore, it should be also emphasized that in the official certificates the nationality of both Ignác and his brothers was marked as Hungarian, whereas the nationality of the non-Hungarian was marked as German, Croatian, etc. After the Gymnasium he attended the two-year's course of Philosophy at Pest University. Complying with his father's wishes who insisted that he should become a military judge, Semmelweis enrolled as a law student in the University of Vienna in 1837. But he soon changed his mind and continued his studies at the faculty of medicine. After one year in the University of Vienna Semmelweis returned to Pest where he attended the university for two years. Then he again returned to Vienna and finished his studies there. He took his degree in 1844 on the basis of his thesis from the field of botanies, entitled "

Traçla us de Vita Plantorum

" (Fig.94.) In the same year he obtained his master's degree in midwifery and graduated as an operating surgeon. Semmelweis stayed in Vienna at a time when the Vienna School of Medicine reached its full development. The internist Skoda and the pathologist Rokitansky had not yet risen to eminence and lectured only in private courses but they enjoyed a tremendous popularity among medical students, Semmelweis included. Rokitansky did not accept the view of the Old School according to which pathology was attributed a secondary role of sanctioning or at best correcting. Following Bichat"

1 s experiments, he enriched pathology with the aspects of pathophysiology. Semmelweis was greatly affected by the influence of Skoda, the reformer of diagnostics in internal medicine and his colleauge Hebra, who put forward a new classification of skin diseases founded on pathological observations. Their effect on Semmelweis revealed itself in both his medical training and erudition and his passion for researching and the methodology of his researches. The New Vienna School was characterized by the predominance of the new trend of pathology the effect of which was to be felt in their results. They could give answers to questions which could never have been solved on the basis of the examination of the living. The collaboration of Skoda the internist, and Rokitansky the pathologist showed whether the internal diagnosis was right and made the control of pathological observations possible in the living organism. Semmelweis had to choose obstetrics instead of internal medicine, since Professor Skoda could not give him the post of an assistant in his medical clinic. Thus he applied for the assistant's vacant post in Professor Klein's Obstet-