Tag #136815 - Interview #78481 (Samuel Izsak)

I abandoned my career as medical practitioner and dedicated myself to the history of medicine. I hadn’t given up practice entirely, but I restricted it to my family. I studied the history of medicine in both Transylvania and the Regat. I wrote and published several books in Romanian, in which I presented the history of medicine and its greatest personalities in the Hungarian community of Transylvania. I published them in Romanian because I wanted to familiarize the Romanian public with this slice of culture of the Hungarians from Transylvania. My first step, in which my mentor, Professor Valeriu Lucian Bologa, was of great help, was to get acquainted one step at a time with the subject, the Romanian and Transylvanian, respectively the European medical traditions and their historical development. I had to get familiar with the medical procedures and the domestic medicine, as well. In time I managed to get into the scientific work of the different authors on the history of medicine in Romania. I paid special attention to the impact of European medicine on Transylvania and Romania. It was a necessary thing to do, and after I did it I was able to organize my thoughts, my sources grew in number and I began writing down what I had learnt. I began working at the chair in 1945, but my first book only came out in 1954. By then I knew and processed many works, and those were the basis for my book, a collection published in 1954 by the Romanian Academy.