Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Egypt, and a shrunken head used by Borneo witchdoctors giving it an international dimen-
sion. Other exhibits - including a medieval chastity belt, trepanning drills, and a range of
brutal-looking medical implements - bone saw, bullet extractor, dissection set - don't bear
thinking about, frankly.
The museum is named after the eponymous nineteenth-century doctor who lived here until
the age of five and is buried in the garden.
Semmelweis
helped save generations of wo-
men thanks to his work on puerperal fever. Along with the many family portraits on display,
there's one of Vilma Hugonai, Hungary's first woman doctor, and another of Kossuth's sister,
Zsuzsanna, who founded the army medical corps during the War of Independence.
In the neighbouring room, the
Holy Ghost Pharmacy
, with its gorgeous, Baroque wood-
carved fixtures and fittings, dates from 1786 and was transplanted here from Király utca.
DR IGNÁC SEMMELWEIS
Dr Ignác Semmelweis
(1818-65) discovered the cause of puerperal fever - a form of
blood poisoning contracted in childbirth, which was usually fatal. While serving in Vi-
enna's public hospitals in the 1840s, he noticed that deaths were ten times lower on the
wards where only midwives worked than on the ones attended by doctors and students,
who went from dissecting corpses to delivering babies with only a perfunctory wash. His
solution was to sterilize hands, clothes and instruments between operations - an idea dis-
missed as preposterous by the hospital, which fired him. Embittered, he wrote open letters
to obstetricians, accusing them of being murderers, and was sent to an asylum where he
died within a couple of weeks. Only after Pasteur's germ theory was accepted was Sem-
melweis hailed as the “saviour of mothers”.
Szarvas tér
Just around the corner from the Semmelweis Medical Museum is
Szarvastér
(Stag Square),
named after the eighteenth-century
Stag House
inn at no. 1, which today functions as the fab-
ulous
Aranyszarvas
restaurant. In between the museum and the restaurant stands a bust of
DrJózsefAntall
(1931-93), the first democratically elected prime minister of Hungary after
the fall of Communism. For many years, while working as the director of the Semmelweis
Museum, he had been dreaming of the chance to emerge from the political shadows, and as
primeminister heskilfully ranhiscentre-right coalition togiveHungaryastable start,though
his social conservatism was loathed by his opponents. He died in office and is buried in the
Ybl Miklós tér
Past the museum and by the riverbank on
Ybl Miklós tér
are two buildings designed in
1876 by Miklós Ybl (1814-91), the man behind the Opera House and other major works. To
