Václav Trnka ‐ the story of an almost forgotten Czech‐Austria‐Slovakia‐Hungarian anatomist of the 18th century, a founder of modern anatomy education in Hungary
Authors: Varga Ivan , Repka Mercedes , Kachlik David , Szekely Andrea 
Published: June 2021

Václav Trnka from Křovice (1739–1791, Latin: Wenzel Trnka Krzowitz) is a unique example of interconnecting the history of medicine within Central Europe. In view of the current geographical distribution of countries, he was born in the Czech Republic, graduated in Austria from the University of Vienna, he became Professor of Anatomy at the newly established Faculty of Medicine in Trnava (today Slovak Republic) and after moving of the University to Buda and later to Pest (today Budapest), he became the founder of the Hungarian anatomy. The region of Upper Hungary in the 17th–18th centuries, which is now known as the Slovak Republic, was traditionally multicultural. Within this region, the Slovak speaking people lived together with the Hungarian and German‐speaking communities. In 1635, Cardinal Péter Pázmány, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Esztergom, decided to found in Upper Hungary the university in order to improve the quality of education. At the University of Trnava, first there were established faculties of Philosophy, Theology and Law, Empress Maria Theresa also founded the Faculty of Medicine. The history of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Trnava was short and lasted only eight years, from 1769 to 1777, when the entire university moved to Buda (Budapest today, Hungary). The Faculty of Medicine in Trnava had five departments of which each was managed by a young graduate of the Vienna Medical School. Among them, there was a young and ambitious Václav Trnka. Trnka came from a noble Bohemian family and was born on October 18, 1739, in Tabor, today's Czech Republic. Václav Trnka became Doctor of Medicine in 1770 at the Medical Faculty in Vienna. As immediately this year he also became Professor of Anatomy at the newly established Faculty of Medicine in Trnava, it is believed he had had excellent teachers of anatomy. In Vienna, Trnka could still meet an anatomist J. L. Gasser (1723–1765). He wrote his doctoral thesis at the Vienna Military Hospital and devoted it to the issue of sciatica. His work was titled “De Morbo Coxario”. Václav Trnka led the Institute of Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine in Trnava from 1770. He introduced anatomy according to the textbooks by J. B. Winslow of Paris (“Expositio anatomica”), B. S. Albinus of Leyden (“De sceleto humano”) and A. Schaarschmidt of Berlin (“Anatomische Tabellen”). Trnka never wrote his own textbook on anatomy, although he published many clinically‐oriented monographs. After the release of the Latin version of the anatomical compendium (1777) by J. F. von Leberius (1727–1808), a court surgeon of Maria Theresa, Trnka used mostly that particular 412‐page work to teach anatomy. After the death of his personal friend Professor Michael Schoreticz in 1786, Václav Trnka took over the teaching of pathology and later internal medicine after him. According to records, Trnka was highly recognized by both colleagues and students. He became Dean of the Faculty of Medicine three times and in the years 1786–1787 he was even Rector of the whole university. Despite the fact that Trnka is considered the founder of the Hungarian anatomy and a major medical figure in Central Europe, there has not been published any biographical information about him in the English language yet. Therefore, through this poster presentation, we would like to remind Václav Trnka both as an anatomist and medical polymath, as well as the beginnings of teaching anatomy in present‐day Slovakia and Hungary.

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.