[Education of surgeons at the Medical School of the University of Pest between 1825 and 1848].

Abstract

From the 1820's a great number of surgeons attended the Faculty of Medicine in Pest. The increasing number of the students was resulted by several circumstances. After the Napoleonic wars peregrination from Hapsburg lands was prohibited. The Faculty of Medicine in Pest however offerred a diploma for its students valid for the whole territory of the Hapsburg Empire. The lectures were held in Hungarian or German, in contrary to the exclusively Latin lectures for medical students. A shorter preliminary education was needed. After three years the student could get his degree Chirurgiae Magister or Chirurgus civilis--the length of studies depended on the pleriminary studies of the surgeon. The Faculty started only two courses, so the surgeons mostly repeated the second or both courses. Although these degrees proved to be inferior to the titles Doctor Medicinae or Doctor Chirurgiae, many students wanted to get it. In the beginning of this period, in 1825/1825 117 persons attended the first semesters of the German, and 59 of the Hungarian course. This growth reached its peak in the years of the cholera. In 1832/1833 255 person matriculated to the first class of the German and 148 to the Hungarian course. This new contagion damaged not only human lifes, but the popularity of the surgical education as well. The number of students began slowly decrease. Another reason for this decrease was the new possibility for peregrination from the 1830's. In 1846/1847 48 persons matriculated to the first German course, and 49 to the Hungarian, while in the second one their number was only 10 and 20. As we can see, the German course was more popular, here came students from the other parts of the Hapsburg Empire, especially Jews: from Moravia (160; 110 of them was Jew), Bohemia (134) or Galicia (178; 124 of them was Jew). Between 1825 and 1846 2618 surgeons matriculated to the Faculty of Pest, many of them however left it with or without doing their exams. 1854 students took every exam, but only 259 got his degree as Chirurgiae Magister in Pest, and 1049 as Chirurgiae Civilis. Presumably many students carried on their studies in Vienna. Although the Faculty of Medicine in Pest was less renowned, than the medical faculty of Vienna or Prague, it definitely played a remarkable role in the contemporary medical and surgical education of the Hapsburg Empire.