Portrait of Josip Kallivoda, oil on canvas, 19th c., HMMF-104
Innsbruck, Graz, Pest, Prague
(Excerpt from the text: Fatović-Ferenčić, Stella. „A paragon of happiness, dignity and success“: the diplomas of Croatian medical students obtained at foreign universities. // Croatian Doctors’ Diplomas: Selected from the Collection of Medical Diplomas and Charters at the Croatian Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy. Zagreb : School of Medicine of the University in Zagreb, 2017. Catalogue of the exhibition, pp. 5–58)
When the Zagreb School of Medicine was still a very new institution, some Croatian students finished their studies in Innsbruck, such as Vatroslav Florschütz, Ljudevit Jurak, Julije Budisavljević and others.
Some Croatian student went to study at the University of Graz, which was founded in 1585 but without the Faculty of Medicine. In 1782 it was converted into a lyceum, where medical and surgical programs were initiated. A little later, in 1863, the Department of Medicine was formed at the University of Graz. The Croatians who finished their medical studies there were, for instance, the following: Franjo Wittausch, Ljudevit Gutschy, Božidar Špišić, Franjo Durst, his successor Stjepan Vidaković, Teodor Wikerhauser, the founder of the Zagreb school of Medicine, Pavao Ćulumović, August Forenbacher, etc.
The Hungarian university was founded in the 17th century but it did not have a school of medicine at the beginning. Medical studied were only introduced after the Swieten reform and the 1769 act was the foundation of the Royal Hungarian Academy at Trnava, which had four faculties, and medicine was one of them. The curriculum was analogous to the one in Vienna. With time the university moved from Trnava and in 1784 it was relocated from Buda to Pest. Out of five lecturers who taught at the Hungarian university, two were Croats, Miho Šoretić and Adam Ignjat Prandt, both graduates from the University of Vienna. Some of our well known doctors of medicine studied and graduated at this university, such as Josip Kallivoda from Osijek, who was appointed chief of medicine in 1882 and chief Croatian physician in the period between 1882 – 1892, Đuro Ernest Kamauf, city physician, senator and the chief of medicine in Croatia, and many others.
Among the oldest European universities is also Charles University in Prague. It was founded in 1348 by Charles IV, the King of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Emperor, from the House of Luxembourg. A larger number of Croatian students of medicine who graduated from this university appeared at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.
