Annales Immunologiae Hungaricae II. [antikvár]

PREFACE The echo of Vol. I of the "Annales Immunologiae Hungaricae" was so favourable both in and outside of Hungary that we feel justified in continuing our annual publications of the results achieved by Hungarian immunologists. We dedicate this volume to the memory of József Fodor, the great Hungarian bacteriologist and hygienist. József Fodor (1843—1901) was the first professor of public health at the Medical Faculty of the Budapest University. His scientific and organizatory activities covered a wide range. Besides fulfilling his duties as pedagogue during more than a quarter of a century; he concerned himself with epidemiology; bacteriology; pathology; industrial, food, rural and soil hygiene. He also elaborated sanitary laws and edited reviews of public health. Fodor was the organizator of Hungarian school hygiene and the postgraduate training for physicians, and his name is closely associated with the beginnings of sanitary propaganda in Hungary. Apart from practical work, he performed a considerable amount of significant research work. His first important researches bore upon the correlations between the contamination of air, soil and water, on the one side, and the spread of epidemic diseases, on the other. Fodor was one of the first investigators who demonstrated the biological significance of chemical processes occurring in the soil. A comparative analysis of hygienic and epidemiological data enabled him to draw important conclusions concerning connections between the distribution of enteral infections and the contamination of soil and water. He repudiated the then prevailing theory of Pettenkoffer's school occording to which the spreading of enteral epidemics is governed by processes of putrefaction occurring in those layers of the soil that are laid bare by the subsidence of underground water. Relying on his epidemiological observations, he claimed that the pathogens of enteral infections, far from being products of putrefaction, were discharged by infected patients. Even before the typhoid bacilli had been discovered did Fodor advance the theory that the pathogens of both typhoid fever and cholera might be found in the world of bacteria. He was convinced that the source of infection was the diseased patient himself and that, in order to check the spread of disease, it was necessary to separate infected persons and to disinfect or destroy all objects coming from, or touched by, them. He emphasized the role of drinking water and milk played in the transmission of enteral infections. In the course of the typhoid epidemic that raged Hungary in 1890, he actually succeeded in isolating typhoid bacilli (already known at that time) from drinking water.