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<\/a>\u2018This is not the kind of anniversary we have been expecting, but even in this special situation, Semmelweis University was worthy of its predecessors and its namesake, Ign\u00e1c Semmelweis,\u2019 Dr. B\u00e9la Merkely, Rector of Semmelweis University, began his speech in the hall of the university\u2019s Department of Urology, where a statue of St. Liborius, the patron saint of urology, was inaugurated on the occasion of the centenary of the institution.<\/p>\nDr. B\u00e9la Merkely said that Semmelweis University would not be a 250-year-old, internationally renowned university without institutions such as the Department of Urology. In his speech, the Rector recalled the history of the clinic and its legal predecessors, as well as the Hungarian pioneers in the field, including G\u00e9za Illy\u00e9s, the first head of the department, whose 150th<\/sup> birth anniversary is also this year. Semmelweis University and its predecessor, as well as its faculty members, played an important role in the fact that urology became a separate discipline from surgery, and the work performed there became internationally recognized. \u2018According to the guest book preserved since 1922, 106 American urologists and surgeons, as well as specialists from more than a hundred other countries, visited the clinic to study its activities until 1938, i.e. until the last year of peace before World War II,\u2019 said Dr. B\u00e9la Merkely.<\/p>\n