[Andreas Dudith's thoughts on medicine]

The author analyses the scientific, first of all medical conceptions of András Dudith, the Hungarian humanist of the 16th century. His attitude to medicine is reconstructed from his wide-ranging correspondence. It is pointed out that without taking into consideration the metaphysical notions of Dudith, his views on epidemiology cannot be discussed. His epistemological considerations and value orientation deduced from his metaphysical notions give the key to the author to explore the relation of Dudith to natural sciences and medicine, and to make statements concerning his religion as well. The author demonstrates that in Dudith's opinion the world could be described as a chain of causes conceived as one-direction influence. In order to avoid infinite regression, he separated three spheres of causes and effects, out of which it is the sphere of immediate causes where medicine has reason for existence. Dudith's epidemiological views are based on his causal conceptions and are free of any irrational element in spite of the fact that they took shape in a speculative way. He held the view that the cause of plague is infection, in opposition to the general belief attributing plague to the effect of infected air. Dudith considered the sporadic cases and the epidemic form of plague identical diseases. He possessed several empirical facts concerning the way of spreading from man to man, which solved the problem of two kinds of occurrence and made it possible for him to set up a chain of causation. The cause is the infection (rot), the effect is the disease, which is the cause of the epidemic. Dudith elucidated medical problems on a conceptual basis, consistently increasing the level of abstraction, then, after determining the gaps in knowledge, he raised new questions and tried to answer them on an empirical ground to be able to apply the same method again. ...