Orvostort Kozl. 1994 ; 40(1-2): 55-64.

[Medical publications in the Scientific Thesaurus]

Jobst A.

Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum, Budapest.

As a result of the increased public interest the first academic journals in sciences, providing anyone with easily accessible information, appeared from the 17th-18th century in Europe. These early journals were encyclopaedic and involved all branches of sciences. This was partly due to the few number of scientists but to the systematising methods of the Enlightenment as well. The first such paper in Hungarian came out only in 1814 (edited by GÃ¡bor DÃ¶brentei) but owing to the little interest it had not lasted longer than four years. The next one, the Scientific Thesaurus, was the longest surviving journal in the first half of 19th century Hungary, published also in Hungarian. The Scientific Thesaurus was also characterised by the publication of a wide range of academic subjects, and though only in supplements, even literature. Dr. Jobst's paper investigated all the fifty medical publications of the Scientific Thesaurus. She concludes that it fulfilled the expectations academic journals were faced with. Through its publications it played an especially important role in distributing newly invented Hungarian terms for anatomy, medicine, and surgery (and for all other fields of natural sciences alike) which was indispensable for creating an independent Hungarian scientific language that could replace Latin and German, the two main lingue franca in Hungarian science so far. the Scientific Thesaurus gave way for special registers of invented scientific terms and also for the disputes that usually followed them. Another field was the presentation of the principles of recent medical schools into Hungarian academic life, such as homeopathy, Mesmerism, Brownism, balneology and traditional medicine. The editors equally stood for the publication of theoretical papers and those reciting the counter measures taken during cholera and small pox epidemics, the development of health organisations, hospital work, etc. In the field of medicine the Scientific Thesaurus carried out its mission in informing not only the Hungarian physician, pharmacist or scientist but the general public as well, about new schools, achievements, and breakthroughs of healing.