Discipline and Superiority: Neurasthenia and Masculinity in the Hungarian Medical Discourse

Gergely Magos

Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 4 (2025): 588-614 DOI 10.38145/2025.4.588

“The nerve is still a mystery, which is why neurasthenia is in vogue,” wrote Viktor Cholnoky, the renowned Hungarian writer in 1904.1 Indeed, neurasthenia, a mental disorder considered a typically male ailment, was at the forefront of medical discourses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet so far, it has largely escaped the attention of Hungarian medical historians. Neurasthenia can be interpreted through multiple analytical frameworks, and connections can be drawn between neurasthenia and experiences of modernization, nationalism, and social inequalities; the emergence of the middle class and consumer society; and the professionalization of psychology, among other factors. This paper aims to explore how neurasthenia, as a male mental disorder, was discussed in the Hungarian medical discourse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that this medical concept contributed to the medicalization of male sexuality and also reinforced the existing social gender hierarchy. Male sexuality and male social roles are the focus of the paper, but I also briefly explore how anxieties over modernity and the perceived decline of the nation were linked to other male mental disorders, such as paralysis progressiva.

Keywords: neurasthenia, masculinity, male sexuality, medicalization

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On Mad Dogs and Their Relation to Human Medicine: The Discourse on Canines in Nineteenth-Century Medical Studies in Porto

Monique Palma

Universidade Aberta Portugal; Interuniversity Center for the History of Science and Technology
(CIUHCT), Nova University of Lisbon

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 4 (2025): 563-587 DOI 10.38145/2025.4.563

This study offers a discussion of the presence of non-human animals, specifically dogs, in the studies of Porto doctors in the nineteenth century. It emphasizes the relationship between humans and dogs in the context of rabies contamination, using inaugural dissertations presented to the Porto Medical and Surgical School as primary sources. This work offers a contribution to an emerging historical overview of the “One Health” movement, which was established in the twentieth century but has roots in earlier periods. The paper argues that there were other elements in the fight against rabies, a zoonosis that troubled Portuguese society in the period covered by this article and required a multiplicity of actions by human medicine, veterinary medicine, the population, and political authorities to manage effective solutions to combat the disease. It offers an illustrative example of how the organization of human society is not shaped solely by humans, as the analysis of the relevant historical sources reveals the prominent, if indirect, role of other non-human animals in shaping social structures. The theoretical and methodological framework of this work is grounded in the history of science and environmental history.

Keywords: history of science; history of medicine; environmental history; non-human; animals and human medicine; medical knowledge

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The Beginnings of Pediatric Psychiatry in the Czech Lands

Helena Chalupová

Charles University

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 4 (2025): 537-562 DOI 10.38145/2025.4.537

Records concerning mental disorders among children are sparse for the earliest period of the field of psychiatry in Bohemia, but they do exist. For a long time, however, no public care was actually available for mentally ill children. This paper investigates the formation of child psychiatry as a separate field in the Czech Lands, tracing the emergence of public care for mentally ill children and the establishment of the first educational institutions for children and adolescents. In Bohemia, these efforts date to 1871, when Karel Slavoj Amerling founded the Ernestinum, an institute for “feebleminded” children in Prague. In 1902, the first outpatient clinic for child psychiatry was established in Prague by Karel Herfort, the first professor of child psychopathology in Bohemia.

Keywords: pediatric psychiatry, mental disorders, children, Ernestinum, Karel Slavoj Amerling, Karel Herfort

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Centralizing Custody and Curing by Chance: Early Austrian Madhouses under Medical Supervision and State Constraint, c. 1780–1830

Carlos Watzka

Sigmund Freud Private University, Vienna

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 Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 4 (2025): 493-536 DOI 10.38145/2025.4.493

This article offers an overview of the early development of madhouses as an insti­tutional framework for the custody and treatment of mentally ill persons, from the initial phase of comprehensive governmental health politics in Austria (the peak of the Enlightenment movement in the region in the late eighteenth century) until 1830, when a second phase, which had begun in 1815 and which bore witness, again, to the establishment of asylums for people suffering from mental disorders, came to an end with the foundation of an asylum in the city of Hall in Tyrol. The article outlines the establishment of such institutions for the accommodation, detention, and, partially, treatment of people seen as insane in the Austrian Hereditary Lands as a political and societal attempt to react to a rising number of individuals who were perceived as suffering from serious mental problems but whose families and communities either did not feel obliged to provide care for them or were simply not capable of treating them anymore in their respective localities. The article points out, as has been noted in the secondary literature, that all early madhouses in Vienna, Linz, Graz, and Salzburg operated primarily as institutions for the internment of persons perceived as mentally ill and posing a threat to themselves and others. The physicians involved intended to implement therapeutical activities, but this was only rarely possible due to a lack of financial resources, accommodation space, and asylum staff.

Keywords: madhouse, psychiatry, Austria, Josephinism, early nineteenth century, social history

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The Journalistic Activity of Rosika Schwimmer
from the 1890s until her Death in a Transnational Perspective

Dóra Fedeles-Czeferner

ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 459-490 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.459

This paper examines the journalistic career of Rosika Schwimmer, a prominent Hungarian feminist and pacifist, from the 1890s until her death. It situates her work within the broader historical context of transnational feminist and pacifist movements of the early twentieth century. Schwimmer’s career was shaped by a wide network of contacts in the international progressive women’s movement. Her activism enhanced her visibility as a public intellectual, but her controversial pacifist stance later led to political isolation and negatively affected her professional opportunities after emigrating to the United States. Throughout her life, Schwimmer used the press as a tool for activism and as a platform for self-promotion. The paper also explores her qualifications, skill sets, and the range of publications she contributed to, which included liberal newspapers and feminist journals.

The paper also provides insights into the challenges women faced in journalism in the first half of the 20th century, contrasting two articles from 1912 and 1914 that present opposing views on women’s prospects in the field. Schwimmer’s career began with translations, which served as a gateway to international journalism. She published in Hungarian, German, and later English-language journals, often on topics like women’s rights, peace advocacy, and international cooperation. Her controversial and eccentric personality led to conflicts with colleagues, which also shaped her professional image and legacy. The paper concludes with a case study of her articles from 1919–1920, which illustrate the fusion of her political and journalistic identities.

Key words: Rosika Schwimmer, journalism, feminist, pacifist, women’s rights, activism, transnational, Hungary, international press

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Beginning of the Nazi Era:
Between Invisibility and Solidarity

Anna Veronica Pobbe

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 3 (2025): 443-458 DOI 10.38145/2025.3.443

In a 1934 publication of the International Red Aid (MOPR), it can be read that Rudolf Diels, head of the Gestapo between 1933 and 1934, described communist women as “the most stubborn enemies of the state because they did not become informers despite being tortured.” Despite their absence in higher positions of the RHD (Rote Hilfe Deutschland, German Red Aid), women played a major role in the activities of the RHD: “It was women [in fact] who drove the bailiffs out of their homes and the provocative Nazis out of the welfare office. […] In the Ruhr region, proletarian housewives put together a delegation and demanded a pay rise for their husbands in the factories. Women prevented arrests and demanded the release of their husbands. This was the case in Berlin and Breslau, where women snatched an arrested apprentice and market trader from the police. In Berlin, the police were unable to arrest a communist in one factory because the workers threatened to go on strike. In the Rhineland, 40 women went to the district administration office and demanded the release of their husbands. In another place, 60 women and their children forced the release of 40 prisoners through a demonstration. In Freiburg, women achieved the release of a communist woman.”2 Taking this attestation as our starting point, the current paper aims to shed a light, at first, on the communist women activism during the Nazi Era. This activism is also reported by some members, like Rosa Lindemann, who was also the leader of a mostly women resistance group based in the Tiergarten district of Berlin: “Some of our women helped the men whose wives had been arrested in the household and looked after the children. We had contacted over thirty families and were able to alleviate some of the suffering. It was a particular joy for us to hear how happy our comrades in the prisons and penitentiaries were that we were looking after their relatives and caring for them.”3 Secondly, the paper aims to address the peculiar strategies that were used by the women, like it has been reported in the Berlin Moabit case, where there was a circle of women, that organized relief campaigns and met weekly, disguised as coffee parties or meetings in garden sheds; these women collected money for relatives of the prisoners and helped resistance fighters who had gone into hiding.4 Last, but not the least, the paper aims to address some key-role women in the Red Aid scenario: like Ottilie Pohl, who died in Theresienstadt.

Keywords: communist women, political activism, solidarity, Third Reich, resistance

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