[Once upon a time there was a medical faculty--a brief history of the Medical Faculty of the Erzsébet University in Pressburg (1914-1919)].

Abstract

Despite the fact that the idea of expanding the medical faculties of Budapest and Kolozsvár was formed in the 1870s, it only came true in the 1910s. The XXXVI. Law of 1912 ensured establishing new faculties in Pozsony and Debrecen. The medical faculty of Erzsébet University in Pozsony opened in 1914. The first three professors, i.e. Lajos Bakay, Ferenc Herzog and Dezső Velits, who formerly worked as head physicians for the State Hospital in Pozsony and the Institute for Midwives, were appointed then. The appointment of further professors and launching the 3rd, 4th and 5th forms were delayed by the outbreak of the war until 1918. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy the newly formed Czechoslovakia dissolved the Hungarian university in 1919. The clinics and institutes of the medical faculty were passed to Czechoslovak ownership, the Hungarian lecturers were dismissed. It is worth mentioning though that Albert Szent-Györgyi and Carl Ferdinand Cori (both Nobel Prize winners) started their scientific career in Pozsony.