[Vienna and Budapest in Semmelweis' life work]

Both Budapest and Vienna played a dominant role in the life of Semmelweis and this fact should mean connection and not separation in scientific research and interpretation. The Hungarian capital was his birth place, the scene of his education and partly also of his university studies, the city where he became professor, wrote his papers, propagated his doctrine and became a partaker of the spiritual workshop of the Pest medical school. Vienna was the city where--impressed by the second Vienna medical school--his medical view was formed, the place of the conception of the "Semmelweis doctrine" and also of his tragic death. Born in a German speaking family which was deeply rooted in historical Hungary, he was bilingual through all his life, avowed himself however as Hungarian. It should be avoided to make him either a hero of the barricades or an opportunist. By defining the etiology of puerperal fever and by elaborating the methods of its prevention he became a great figure of scientific research. As to the essence of the Semmelweis doctrine there is no place for debates of priority. The doctrine was confirmed in the era of bacteriology.