The Collection of Diplomas and Charters

Diploma of doctor of medicine Lujo Thaller, Beč, 1914., HMMF-230

The collection of diplomas and charters in large part belonged to the Department of History of Medical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences in Gundulićeva 24 / III in Zagreb and was given in charge to the Museum. It is mostly collected through donations from private inheritances. Adjacent to certain items, notes about the donors were also found in the Department. A smaller number of items arrived in the Collection by donations from private legacies after the foundation of the Museum.

The Collection contains original documents: certificates and diplomas of completed apprenticeship, education and academic titles of Croatian pharmacists, physicians and other scientists in the field of biomedicine sciences; the charters of recognition for full-time and honorary members for merits and participation in the work of professional medical and pharmaceutical societies; charters of state awards and recognitions; charters of recognition for participation in professional and scientific conferences, for won prizes at exhibitions and the like.

We are dealing with handwritten and printed material with handwritten signatures and printed, applied or attached stamps. Some diplomas and charters have been preserved in a valuable stylized frames or in a corresponding container, as we noted in inventory records. Some diplomas and charters are distinguished by artistic design (graphic design in the style of bidermayer, historicism, secession … or in the style of the 1970s). Items originate from the period from the 18th century up to the second half of the 20th century. Since the Pharmacy study within the Faculty of Humanities in Zagreb was founded only in 1882 and the School of Medicine in 1917, early Croatian pharmacists and medical practitioners were educated abroad and their diplomas were issued at various European universities, mostly in Vienna, Graz and Budapest . Individual charts were issued in the United States and Canada.

Among the names of holders of diplomas and charters are 34 pharmacists, 44 medical practitioners, one chemist and one biologist. With the highest number of diplomas and certificates are presented the doctors Lujo Thaller, Theodor Wickerhauser, Nikola Jagić, Stjepan Vidaković, Franjo Durst, Franjo Kogoj and Viktor Boić and pharmacists Hrvoje Tartalja, Milan Tkalčić and Arpad Pečić.

As a particularly interesting item, the collection contains certificates of international recognition from Eugen Viktor Feller, a renowned pharmacist, for “Elsa Fluid” and a diploma of Kornelija Sertić, the first Croatian doctor who graduated from the Zagreb School of Medicine.