J. Antall szerk.: Medical history in Hungary 1972. Presented to the XXIII. International Congress of the History of Medicine / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 6. (Budapest, 1972)
I. Friedrich: The Spreading of Jenner's Vaccination in Hungary
i /¡_ 2 Medical History in Hungary 1972 (Comm. Hist. Artis Med. Suppl. 6.) their children either from death or from the life-long blindness or deafness caused by variola. A trained doctor was, however, mostly the privilege of the towns, and the illness of the countryman was generally cured by barbers, midwives or by medicine women. In this way the science of vaccination fell into profane hands, though many of them were turned "doctors" either by the wish to help or by necessity. And there was a pretty number of those who took up the lancet only because of the hope of financial profit. Bene spoke up against these charlatans' manipulations: "we should appreciate befittingly the most beautiful invention of the last century and do not let it be stripped of its grandness and usefulness by the squalid hands of ignorant people. Let us entrust it only to those men who are spending their days in examining the healthy and ill human nature ; who are looking for their happiness in keeping up their human fellows. . ." 2 5 According to his opinion only the doctor or the "clever Barber" may inoculate and the spreading of variola can be checked only by their work. After some decades János Strébely, surgeon and obstetrician was protesting even against the collaboration of the barbers saying that the "task of a barber is cutting the beard and the task of a legitimate doctor and surgeon is protecting lifer 2 6 It was at the beginning of the 19th century, too, that a contemporary of Bene, the above mentioned Ferenc Ņÿųlas, chief medical officer of Transylvania, put his conception to paper. He thought that learned people —priests, schoolmasters and cantors —or everybody being clever with his hands could learn to inoculate and by this the doctors' privilege could be eliminated. The outspoken protomedicus did not spare his colleagues and in his opinion moneymindedness was the only obstacle in the way of life-saving vaccination: "Profit is the only cause of the doctors' readiness and where it is absent there the sinew of the doctor will fail. Most peasant will rather give their children to death thatn to pay the doctor, even whose name they do not like; well, who will extirpate blistery variola among them ?" 2 7 And when free inoculation will be prescribed by law —he adds —surely every Aesculap will endorse his suggestion. The idea of the chief physician of Transylvania with which he wanted to solve the public health problem of the village poor —did not come true. At the price of a lot of fights vaccination was carried to victory by the doctors, snatching it from the good-intentioned or less good-intentioned hands of the incompetent. 2r > Bene, Ferenc: Rövid oktatás a mentő himlőről (Short Teaching About Protective Variola). Buda, 1816. 2nd ed. p. 40. 2 G Srébely, János: Észrevételek a himlőoltás miként lehető jobb elrendezéséről (Remarks About the Best Arrangement of Vaccination). O. T. 1841. VIXth Term, No. 19. p. 292. 2 7 Nyulas, Ferenc: Kolosvári tehén himlő (Cow-pox in Kolosvár). Kolozsvár, 1802. p. 29.
