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

was professor of pathological anatomy between 1861 and 1873 but his interests covered a fairly bigger area, including archaeology, muscology and the protection of historic monuments as well. Among his contemporaries we can find János Wagner (1811-1889), professor of internal medicine, József Török (1814-1894), professor of forensic medicine and public health, and Ignác Hirschler (1823-1891) the famous optician who had been a private doctor of one of the most excellent Hungarian poet, János Arany (1817-1882) for a long time. The show-case presents dental and ophtalmological instruments and a few interesting pieces from the spectacle-collection of the museum. Probably one of the most impressive objects of the exhibition is János Czermák's (1828-1873) laryngoscope, constructed by him in 1858. Czermák — a Czech by origin — was professor of physiology at the Faculty of Medicine of Pest between 1858 and 1860. The exhibited instruments (the laryngoscope, the auroscopes, nasoscopes, the tongue-spatulas, the laryngeal painters, etc.) present the contemporary standard of otorhinolaryngology (ORL) in Hungary. XIII. The microbiological revolution and medicine in Hungary As a result of the manifold development in medicine scientific specialization has been accelerated from the middle of the 19th century. A spectacular series of breakthroughs were achieved in microbiology. If we summarize the history of these researches, it may breaks down as follows: 1. Discovery of micro-organisms by Leeuwenhoek in 1683. 2. Establishment of the doctrine of the germ origin of diseases by Agostino Bassi (1771-1856) 3. Denial of the theory of spontaneous generation from the middle of the 17th c. to the 18th c. Began with Francesco Redi (1626-1697) Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799). And eventually Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) came to the conclusion, about 1867, that ' There is no fermentation without micro-organisms and each fermentation is caused by a special germ'

. Beside the portraits of the outstanding personalities of contemporary medicine: Pasteur (1822-1895), Koch (1843-1910), Metchnikoff (1845-1916), Hata (18371938), and Ehrlich (1854-1915) you can see enlarged copies of the signatures of these eminent scientists. Next, in the two show-cases, we have displayed József Fodor's gown from his honourary degree ceremony at Cambridge in 1891. And in the next window there is a uniform of a chief medical officer from the Hungarian Honvéd Army around 1900, with a sword and a kepi of a regiment medical officer.