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)

G. Buzinkayt Hungarians on Great Britain, 1620—1848. (Observations on English Education and Public Health in Hungarian Travelogues)

G. Buzinkay : Hungarians on Great Britain, 1620 —1848.

.. ßj beer and lit it in front of the public and showed the remainder, a resionous material around

. Several women next to me said in disgust

: Indeed, I won't ever drink at all. It is interesting for you to know that the temperance society in North-America sent four million copies of an excellent paper written on this subject to England to be distributed free of charge. Finally a saving-box and pure water for drinking were taken round. Leaving the room, in the entrance hall large sheets of paper were placed on the tables with the inscription

: "Temperance Society

". I herewith undertake not to drink ale and porter beer, cyder (apple-wine) wine or any other spirits unless as medicine. Who signed his name and address and rank became morally the member of the Society".

3

8 According to him in Great Britain and North-America there were already five thousand similar societies founded. The travellers

—for reasons easily to be understood often referred to the brothels in London and thus we can get an idea of this acute question of public health, too. This off-spring of the capitalist metropolis greatly surprised Hungarian travellers of the 17th—18th centuries. Miklós Bethlen wrote that in London: ".. .though the people are all Presbyterian, there are still many secret brothels.

. .",

3

9. In the beginning of the 19th century János Zigán said the same: "...the number of women living by lechery exceeds 40 000", many of them are only 13 or hardly older.

4

0 * After reading the relevant literature and examining the collected data that have come down to us from the two and a half centuries preceeding the middle of the 19th century, we must admit that only a rough picture can be formed on what were the main attractions and specialities in the eyes of the Hungarian travellers referring to education and public health in England and especially London. English influence did not manifest in the immediate descriptions but it was felt through a series of linked transmissions in the activity, behaviour and life-work of the personalities concerned. The few details we have mentioned above suggest that the greatest experience of the Hungarian travellers was the manifold aspects of bourgeois Great Britain, the increasing empire, the unsurpassed interpenetration of private and public interest, club life, freedom and lack of sophistication, the grasping of practical questions and agenda instead of abstract ideas, the training for life, social welfare, physical and intellectual purity. The words of Bertalan Szemere are the best expression of this idea: "...Considering the origin of clubs and several other institutions we find that public and personal interest are not at all in contrast as some 3

8Szemere, op. cit. p. 30. 3

9 Bethlen, op. cit. p. 221.; He remarks here: "We went to a house under the sign of the Saracen King. We happened to arrive late at night, well, immediately [we were given] a lot of things, Spanish wine, Canary sect [dessert wine made of the raisins of the grapes grown on the Canaries], two whores for each of us, one of them being only 18 years of age.

.." 4

0 Zigdn, op. cit. p. 60. 5 Orvostörténeti Közlemények 6