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 discovery. It would be equally wrong to consider him a revolutionary heroe - though there in no doubt about his sympathy for the revolution - or being hostile to his nation in the days of the struggle for independence. On March 20th 1849 his appointment as assistant at the Clinic expired. His request for its renewal was rejected by Klein and Rosas. Later he applied for a recognition as private dozent (9th. February 1850) and asked to be allowed to demonstrate on phantoms and cadavers. In his next petition of 9th. May he even accepted the restriction not to use cadavers and to demonstrate only on phantoms "until the cadaver-question would be settled". His friends persuaded him to deliver a lecture in the Medical Society of Vienna on May 15 th 1850 with Professor Rokitansky presiding. It was followed by two discussions in consecutive meetings. He was triumphed and opposed to in the last months of his stay in Vienna. At last his appointment as private dozent arrived on October 10th 1850 "with the restriction that my practical demonstrations could only be done on phantoms"

. In the same month he suddenly left Vienna and returned to Pest. His personal disillusions are not considered by many to be a serious enough reason to account for his sudden leave. We learn from a letter of his to Markusovszky that in the meantime he had been at home. His colleagues, the members of the emerging "School of Pest", Balassa and Markusovszky

, too might have urged him to return home. He soon found, however, that the situation was not much better at home either. His friends, the most eminent representatives of the School of Pest had fought for the rebirth of a new burgeois Hungary and during the revolution fulfilled their duties as military surgeons. A hard time came upon them after August 1849, the surrender at Világos. The Balassa-circle was to make up for the lack of social organizations and scientific institutions abolished or hard-pressed by Austrian neo-absolutism. The lack of medical literature was more and more acute since the Orvosi Tár ceased to exist in 1849. At last the Orvosi Hetilap (Medical Weekly) came out in 1857 edited by Markusovszky. It was the forum of the School of Pest, the papers of Balassa were published there and the article of Semmelweis was first published in it. Balassa was a public man, the "head" of the society, but the real organizer was Markusovszky, not only of Hungarian medical life but also of medical publishing. In 1863 he founded the Hungarian Medical Publishing Society, and at the same time, as private physician to the Eötvös and Trefort families he established important political connections. In the period of the Compromise of 1867 medical life was characterized by busy public atmosphere but often also by clique-mindedness. In this period of preparation to transform the country to a European burgeois state, in the reform plans for the administration of higher education and public health, Semmelweis had an active part, too. The state of affairs were, however, rather miserable. In the Medical Univer-