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)
M. Vida : Serving two Nations: Tivadar Duka (1825—1908)
SERVING TWO NATIONS: TIVADAR DU KA (1825—1908) by M Á R I A VIDA TTis life is an outstanding example of how we should keep the memory of those to whom we owe gratitude .. .' n These were the opening words of Sir Aurel Stein in his memorial lecture on Tivadar (Theodore) Duka, the fellowcountryman, who —like Stein himself —became an Englishman while remaining a Hungarian until his last hour. The lecture was sent from Kashmir, then the residence of Sir Aurel, five years after the death of Duka, on the request of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, but posterity —and his mother country especially —whose contribution to medical history and orientalism was not insignificant. He was the first to draw a detailed picture of Sándor Körösi Csoma to both the British and the Hungarian public, and after acquiring the papers of Körösi in India he made the works which had appeared only in English or German, available in Hungarian as well. But in the last sixty years Tivadar Duka's memory has not received more appreciations than a few obituaries or memoirs on an anniversary. FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO THE END OF THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE Tivadar Duka was born on June 22 1825 at Dukafalva in Upper Hungary (today in Slovakia). The village had barely 250 Slovak inhabitants, two thirds Catholic, one third Lutheran. The father, Ferenc Duka of Dukafalva and Kucsin was a Lutheran and the lord of the village, a sort of country squire, whose family received the patent of nobility back in 1578. The mother was Johanna Szeghy, a commoner. Many years later Tivadar Duka himself collected the data on the history of his family, using the original documents in the county archives, to give "some family relics to his descendants living in England". 2- One of the ancestors was a general of the Austrian army, the courageous commander of the noted "Duka-regiment". After the fall of the War of Independence in 1849 Duka owed his life to his name —as it was revealed by 1 Stein, Aurél: Duka Tivadar emlékezete. (In Memory of Tivadar Duka) Budapest, 1913. Magyar Tudományos Akadémia elhunyt tagjai fölött tartott emlékbeszédek (Memorial Lectures Held Over Deceased Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Vol. XIV. No. 9. p. 2. 2 Ibid., p. 2. 13*
