Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)
Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts - Guide to the Exhibition
Gesundbrunnen der Österreichischen Monarchia (1777) is a richly illustrated and thoroughly elaborated work. We have placed it in the first show-ease, together with the first general book on balneology written in Hungarian by József Török (1813-1894). In the next case you can see Ferenc Nyulas's (1758-1808) Az erdélyországi orvosvizeknek bontásáról közönségesen (The Ordinary Classification of Transylvanian Mineral Waters), which was published in 1800, and remained a classsical authority throughout the 19th ccntury. From the beginning of the 19th ccntury the health resorts of the Monarchy became more and more fashionable among the Hungarian upper classes, gradually assuming the features of the middle class. The Bohemian glass industry, famous for its refined taste and excellent technique, supplied the visitors with beautiful spa glasses. In the first show-ease we have presented spa glasses mostly of Bohemian origin (Karlsbad, Marienbad, Rotñtsçĥ ), together with Biedermaicr glasses manufactured in Transdanubia, and sold in Balatonfüred. There arc three groups of glasses. The first were used in the Felvidék or Northern Hungary (Slovakia), Pöstyén, Bártfa, Szliács, Stubnya, Tátrafüred ctc. The second group represents the Transylvanian baths (Borszék, Élőpatak, Mehadia, Visk ctc.). And the glasses in the third group were all hand-made in the Párád Glass House. In 1863 the Locumtenentia classified all Hungarian spas according to the curative power of their mineral waters. They ranked several places into the first category including Balatonfüred, Bánk, Bártfa, Bazin, Bikszád, Buziás, Erdőbánya, Harkány, Karsehnbach, Lubló, Nagyvárad, Párád, Postÿen, Szliács, Szinnye-Lipócz, Szobráncz, Tátrafürcd, Tarcsa, Trcncscn-Tcplicz, Vihnyc, Visk and six baths of Buda. Between the two show cases you can see the map of Hungarian mineral waters and spas made for the Budapest Exhibition in 1885 by Kornel Chyzer (18361909), a physician and balncologist. The engravings above the glass eases present different baths. Matthias Mcrian (1593-1650) illustrated mineral water treatment in Langen Schwalbach at the middle of the 17th ccntury. Georg (1542-1600) and his son Jacob Hocfnagel (15751630) made the one in 1617 that shows Eger (Erlau); it was one of the illustration in the Hocfnagcls' famous album the Civitatcs orbis tcrrarum, published in Cologne 1618. We have arrayed a row of coloured lithographs about Szliács. The cartoons by Émile Charles Jacques (1813-1894) on the right illustrates the usual treatment: drinking eure, cold and hot bathing. (The Charivari Lithographs, 1843-44) VIII. Jenner and smallpox vaccination One of the most dangerous of all diseases which terrorized human race was undoubtedly smallpox. Statistical data informing us about the speed of its spread are shocking. It was such an everyday disease that a warrant of a London criminal 59
