Nemes János: Healing Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)

Let the Figures Talk

Pharmacy Museum

Almost everyone visiting Budapest strolls the medieval streets of Buda Castle, visits Matthias Church, the Fishermen’s Bastion and other monuments. It is easy to see why UNESCO declared Buda Castle part of the cultural heritage of the world, similarly to the Acropolis in Athens, the Great Wall of China or Westminster Abbey.

While you are here it is well worth paying a visit to the Pharmacy Museum. Using the building of a medieval merchant house it replaces the 18th-century Golden Eagle pharmacy. Only fractions of the figurative wall paintings remain in the four rooms of this museum which is of cultural-historical interest. Its late medieval and mostly Baroque equipment, chemist’s pots, tools and furniture represent great artistic value.

(Address: 1023 Budapest, 11, Tárnok u. is.)

Let the figures talk

Do not be deterred, dear reader, there will be no statistical charts and diagrams in this short chapter. We feel, however, that in order to give you a more precise view of the health care standards of a city of two million inhabitants, a few figures are inevitable.

When evaluating the health care standards of a country, it is not enough to compare the relevant facts and figures with those of its neighbouring countries. It is important to know where development started, and what standards were like in the past. Not five hundred years ago, but say at the turn of this century. Descriptions and statistical figures of the period show that the situation was good. In 1900 there were 35 thousand hospital beds in Hungary. Hospitals today have the capacity of accommodating three times as many patients (104,479 to be precise). This is a spectacular development if we consider that both the area of the country and the number of its inhabitants has diminished considerably in the meantime. At present Hungary has just over ten million inhabitants. It is also true that because of the conservative character of our health care system the average number of days of treatment per patient is much higher in Hungary than in Western Europe (10 days with so-called urgency beds, and 32 on chronic wards).

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