{"id":16889,"date":"2019-05-20T09:53:36","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T07:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/?p=16889"},"modified":"2020-02-17T11:07:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T10:07:30","slug":"generations-at-the-university-four-generations-of-semmelweis-descendants-have-been-doctors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/2019\/05\/generations-at-the-university-four-generations-of-semmelweis-descendants-have-been-doctors\/","title":{"rendered":"Generations at the University \u2013 Four Generations of Semmelweis Descendants have been Doctors"},"content":{"rendered":"

All of Ign\u00e1c Semmelweis\u2019s descendants who are or have been practicing doctors have links to Semmelweis University: his great-great grandchild, <\/strong>the recently deceased Dr. K\u00e1lm\u00e1n H\u00fcttl<\/strong><\/a> was a professor at the V\u00e1rosmajor Heart and Vascular Center, while his brother Dr. Tivadar H\u00fcttl is a senior lecturer there. Their sons \u2013 i.e. the great-great-great grandchildren of the university\u2019s namesake \u2013 Dr. Art\u00far H\u00fcttl and Dr. Andr\u00e1s H\u00fcttl, are residents at the V\u00e1rosmajor clinic and at the Department of Urology, respectively. The vocation of being a doctor has passed down for four generations now within the family. In their interview, we also asked the three family members about what it means today to work at the university as a descendant of the greatest Hungarian doctor.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cIt is no merit being a descendant of Semmelweis, but we look at this family relation with pride and respect,\u201d says Dr. Tivadar H\u00fcttl, a senior lecturer at the V\u00e1rosmajor Heart and Vascular Center, and a great-great grandchild of Ign\u00e1c Semmelweis. As he describes it, this connection is not in the forefront of their minds during everyday life, but it does provide an additional boost to enter the gates of a university day after day that carries the name of their ancestor. They took part in several commemorative events during last year\u2019s Semmelweis memorial year, and their names have perhaps come more into focus as a result, but they do not really wish to \u201cflaunt\u201d this family connection, he notes. Since their names are not the same, in many cases the connection is only revealed by accident even to friends and co-workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a starting resident, I was holding the retractors when the assistant jokingly turned to the visiting physician leading the operation and, pointing at me, said that \u2018he is the most famous doctor at our clinic, a relative of Semmelweis,\u2019\u201d says the senior lecturer\u2019s son Dr. Andr\u00e1s H\u00fcttl, a trainee specialist at the Department of Urology, recalling one story. And when each November he grows a mustache for the Movember awareness-raising movement, he does get comments from his colleagues that he resembles his famous predecessor. Dr. Andr\u00e1s H\u00fcttl says that although he does not keep it a secret, he usually does not volunteer the information that he is the great-great-great grandson of the most famous Hungarian doctor.<\/p>\n

\"\"His younger cousin, Dr. Art\u00far H\u00fcttl, a resident radiologist at the V\u00e1rosmajor Heart and Vascular Center \u2013 the son of Dr. K\u00e1lm\u00e1n H\u00fcttl, who was a professor at the center \u2013 treats this issue similarly. As he says, this connection gives him conflicting feelings: on the one hand, it is a source of great pride, while on the other, he also feels pressure that with such a bloodline, he cannot perform just like any other person. \u201cOnce during an exam, the teacher\u2019s first question was whether it is true that I am a descendant of Semmelweis. Well, the stakes just got higher from then on, but fortunately this does not happen every day,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

Ign\u00e1c Semmelweis does not have any descendants that bear his name; the only relations still alive today are from his daughter Ant\u00f3nia, who was one year old when her father died. Of Ant\u00f3nia\u2019s five children, one of her daughters, Marietta Lehoczky, married Tivadar H\u00fcttl, a surgeon from Debrecen, in 1916 and gave birth to twin sons, but she died shortly following childbirth. The two brothers, Tivadar and K\u00e1lm\u00e1n, were raised with the help of their grandmother, Ant\u00f3nia Semmelweis. K\u00e1lm\u00e1n died in World War II while serving as a gunnery lieutenant, while his brother followed in his father\u2019s footsteps and became a medical doctor. Dr. Tivadar H\u00fcttl, a professor of surgery, worked at the university\u2019s 1st Department of Surgery from 1944, and his sons are Dr. K\u00e1lm\u00e1n H\u00fcttl and Dr. Tivadar H\u00fcttl. Dr. Tivadar H\u00fcttl says that he became aware of his relation to Semmelweis gradually, through stories told within the family. \u201cUnfortunately, no personal recollections of Semmelweis himself survived in the family, and the only physical memorabilia is a tortoise-shell letter opener engraved with a message that it was made for his youngest daughter, meaning my grandmother, Ant\u00f3nia Semmelweis,\u201d he recounts.<\/p>\n

\"\"There have thus been doctors in the H\u00fcttl family for four generations now, and Dr. Andr\u00e1s H\u00fcttl says that for him, Semmelweis is more a historical example, while during his everyday work as a surgeon he feels it is more important that his activities \u201clive up\u201d to those of his grandfather and great-grandfather. Both Dr. Andr\u00e1s H\u00fcttl and Dr. Art\u00far H\u00fcttl note that they consciously tried for a long time to separate themselves from their ancestors and not become doctors simply because of the family tradition. Andr\u00e1s studied to become a biologist in the U.S., and it was only when he read a half-page section on Semmelweis in the notes of his biology course that he decided he would indeed become a doctor.<\/p>\n

Art\u00far also says that at a certain point, he just felt that this is the right course for him, independent of the family tradition. \u201cOf course, it is difficult to say that my ancestors had no influence on me, as this was what I grew up in, and my first childhood memories are also linked to the V\u00e1rosmajor, so it was a very familiar feeling to go there for my residency,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

As for what it was in Semmelweis\u2019s story that affected his offspring most? Dr. Art\u00far H\u00fcttl says that for him, the attitude of the professors who refused to recognize Semmelweis\u2019s achievements and attacked him is a cautionary tale. When we impulsively say that something cannot be true, that the other person is wrong, we should always be aware that ideas that sound absurd at first could also turn out to be true. Dr. Andr\u00e1s H\u00fcttl believes that the greatest tragedy of Semmelweis\u2019s life is that his work was not valued while he was alive. The recognition that should have been his has gone instead to his descendants, as today Ign\u00e1c Semmelweis is the pride of the entire Hungarian medical community, and in fact the entire country.<\/p>\n\r\n [slb_exclude]\r\n

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Dr. Tivadar H\u00fcttl quotes the conclusion of Semmelweis\u2019s famous book, The Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever<\/em>, in which he says that he is certain that the time will come sooner or later when childbed fever will cease to exist in the world, and even if it does not happen in his lifetime, the knowledge will sweeten the hour of his death. Dr. Tivadar H\u00fcttl notes that this thought also indicates that Semmelweis staked his life with passion on what he believed in, this was his lodestar. At the same time, Semmelweis\u2019s tragedy also shows that carrying through an idea requires some diplomacy as well, and this should also be part of a doctor\u2019s toolbox today, he added.<\/p>\n

Dr. K\u00e1lm\u00e1n H\u00fcttl passed away on March 5, 2019 at the age of 64. In the book In Memory of Ign\u00e1c Semmelweis<\/em>, published in 2015, he said that being a direct descendant of Semmelweis afforded him with inner spiritual capital. It provides a feeling of strength to be linked to one of the most famous doctors that ever lived in the world, as he put it. For his descendants, the task is simpler than we would think: live up to his life\u2019s work. As he emphasized in the book, it was through his famous ancestor that he realized that we have to stand by our discoveries and our convictions, and sooner or later the truth will prevail.<\/p>\n

P\u00e1lma Dobozi\u00a0
\nTranslation: Tam\u00e1s Deme\u00a0
\nPhoto: Attila Kov\u00e1cs \u2013 Semmelweis University
\nThe interview was conducted in the Central Library of Semmelweis University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We asked the family members about what it means to work at the university as a descendant of the greatest Hungarian doctor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101535,"featured_media":16892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,17],"tags":[85,37],"class_list":["post-16889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-semmelweis-world","tag-anniversary-series","tag-semmelweis-250"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16889"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16907,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16889\/revisions\/16907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}