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

Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts (Guide for the Exhibition)

turn of the century and at the beginning of the 19th century the expected progress stopped on account of the system of absolutism. A new prosperity of clinical medicine started with the rise of the second Vienna School (Fig. 58.) in 1841. The leading person of this school was the pathologist Karl Rokitansky (18041878) whose "

Handbuch der pathologischen Anatomie

" was published in that year. In the show-case we present Joseph Skoda's (1805-1881) work entitled "

Abhandlung über Perkussion und Auskultation

" ("Treatise on percussion and auscultation"). He was the first to combine these two methods of examination and thus pathological diagnostics was provided with a firm basis. The third leading personality of the Second Vienna School was Ferdinand Hebra (1818-1880), the confidential friend of Ignác Semmelweis. (Both Skoda and Hebra were of Czech origin.) Hebra's interest was centred mainly on dermatology. His famous book on skin diseases entitled "

Diagnostik der Hautkrankheiten

" was published in Vienna in 1845. His vast experience on this subject made him known all over the world. Professor Hebra was the first to review Semmelweis' s discovery. Beside this outstanding triad the name of Joseph Hyrtl (1810-1894) should be mentioned here. He came from Hungary and was professor of topographical anatomy at Vienna and a most successful teacher of this subject. His book "Handbuch der Topographischen Anatomie" published in Vienna in 1865 is exhibited in the show-case. Next to the documents of books and portraits there are the plaques of the greatest personalities of the Vienna School to be seen. We may maintain that the members of the second Vienna School aimed at the "modern scientific foundation of the different branches of clinical medicine". 5. Medical Instruments in the First Half of the 19th Century In the first half of the 19th century Paris became the European centre for medicine. We should only consider the following names: Xavier Bichat (1771180

2), Jean Nicolas Corvisart (1755-1826), Philippe Pinel (1755-1826), Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781-1826), Francois Joseph Victor Broussais (1772-1838) and Claude Bernard (1813-1878). Bichat introduced the term "tissue" and emphasized that the origin of a disease is in the damaged tissues. He published his experiences in his work "Reserches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort" ("Physiological researches on life and death"), a copy of which (Paris, 1805) is exhibited here. His activity greatly contributed to the development of cytology, histology and his influence was felt on pathological anatomy, too. We have already mentioned Corvisart's merit of the rediscovery of percussion, but he also made a very notable contribution to special pathology, to cardiotherapy. We have exhibited here the contemporary wooden samples of Laennec's stetoscopes.