Published on 15 September 2016
doctor of internal medicine – university professor – founder of Czech medical propedeutics – head of propedeutics clinic in Prague – long-term member of Association of Czech Physicia
* 17 January 1863 Beroun - † 27 May 1932 Prague
Antonín Veselý was born on 17 January 1863 in Beroun into the family of master butcher Erazim Veselý and his wife Anna Veselá (nee Konvalinská). He studied in Příbram and at the Academic Grammar School in the Old Town in Prague, where he passed his school leaving tests on 22 June 1883. Among his classmates were: the future Czech classical philologist and archaeologist and dean of the Philosophical Faculty of the Imperial and Royal Charles-Ferdinand University in 1914-15, Prof. PhDr. František Groh (1863−1940); the future Czech lawyer and professor of the history of private and public law in Central Europe at Faculty of Law of the Royal and Imperial Charles-Ferdinand University, Miloslav Stieber (1865−1934); and the future Czech lawyer, historian, and long-term employee of the Prague City Archives (of which he was director from 1907), Josef Teige (1862−1921).
From the winter semester of 1883-84 on, Antonín Veselý was a student at the Faculty of Medicine of the Czech Royal and Imperial Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, and after passing the rigorous examinations - the first on 25 May 1888, the second on January 1889 and the third on 29 April 1889 – he graduated as a doctor of medicine on 6 May 1889. From 9 May 1889 he worked as an external physician at the Czech Surgical Clinic, headed by prof. MUDr. Vilém Weiss (1835‒1891), the first dean of the Royal and Imperial Czech Faculty of Medicine of the Charles-Ferdínand University, which was located in the complex of the Royal and Imperial General Hospital at Karlovo náměstí in Prague. From 1 October 1889 until 1 August 1890 he was employed at the same clinic as a surgical trainee, also attending the mandatory three-month course at the Royal and Imperial Czech Provincial Mental Hospital. From 1 October 1893 until 30 September 1898 he worked at the First Czech Medical Clinic of the Royal and Imperial Charles-Ferdinand University as assistant to Prof. MUDr. Bohumil Jan Eiselt (1831‒1908), the senior consultant and head of the department of internal medicine, also founder of Czech internal medicine, co-founder of the Association of Czech Physicians and the Časopis českých lékařů (Magazine of Czech Physicians - MCP), and royal and imperial court councellor.
During his medical practice and assistantship, Antonín Veselý made several study visits abroad which greatly influenced the professional and scientific direction of his publications (for example, Medicinská Rus (Medical Russia), Rozpravy České akademie, 1894). In 1893 he visited the Institute of Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg, and in 1897 he travelled to Germany, Denmark and Sweden. On 12 August 1898 he was habilitated as an associate professor at the First Czech Medical Clinic in special pathology and therapy for internal diseases after giving his inaugural lecture on X-rays in the service of the diagnosis of internal diseases and submitting his habilitation thesis The effects of various products of the tubercle bacillus on human and experimental tuberculosis (Rozpravy České akademie, 1898) together with other published studies, e.g.: Two cases of acute poisoning by nitrobenzene: Healing (MCP, 1892); Asian Cholera (MCP, 1892); The treatment of Stuttering (MCP, 1895); Three cases of Friedreich's ataxia (MCP, 1895); Clinical cases of primary tumours of the heart and etiology of positive venous pulse (Rozpravy České akademie, 1896); Dizziness, stiff and twisted neck, rotating movements conditioned by primary suppuration in the osseous labyrinth in rabbits (MCP, 1897); Case of spinal caries with unusual development of bilateral psoas abscess (MCP, 1897); and, in cooperation with the academics Kimla and Poupě, Contribution to the knowledge of the tubercle bacillus and its products (Rozpravy České akademie, 1898). […] In addition to these works, the below signed [Antonín Veselý] declares to have given a series of lectures, demonstrations, critiques and scientific papers at the meetings of the Association of Czech Physicians, of which reports have been published in the Association’s protocols and in the Magazine of Czech Physicians.
Between 1898 and 1904 Antonín Veselý worked as a private associate professor of internal medicine. [….] During his lectureship, he was diligent in giving lectures related mostly to medical propedeutics, which, considering the large number of attending students, was greatly beneficial. Moreover, his scientific activities were numerous at the time. Between 1898 and 1903, Antonín Veselý was an editor of the Magazine of Czech Physicians, and proved himself to be an agile organizer and lecturer at the 3rd, 4th and 5th Congress of natural scientists and physicians. He participated in many medical symposia and congresses abroad, giving lectures at some: Paris and Moscow (1900), Krakow and Napoli (1901), Sofia and Krakow (1911).
On 16 June 1904 he was appointed “adjunct professor”, and on 4 December 1909 an “adjunct non-stipendiary professor”. In April 1913 the Ministry of Culture and Education responded to the increasing needs of the Czech Faculty of Medicine concerning the teaching of clinical propedeutics. The only faculty clinic in Prague fell under the German Inistitute of Experimental Pathology and [….] the ministry met the faculty’s needs only so far as to give an order in 1913 to two adjunct professors of this faculty to give in each semester at least three hours of lectures on clinical propedeutics, those professors being Prof. A. Veselý at the First Medical Clinic and Prof. L. Syllaba at the Second Medical Clinic.1 Antonín Veselý responded to his “teaching order” for clinical propedeutics with practical lessons in "electrology and radiology" on 11 April 1913.
Before World War I, Antonín Veselý was also a secretary of the Czech Provincial Support Society for Pulmonary Diseases in the Czech Kingdom, and also the secretary of the Association of Czech Physicians and the co-founder of the Czech Spa Association in Luhačovice.1 Furthermore, he published his lectures and the results of his scientific work, for example: X-rays in the service of the diagnosis of internal diseases (MCP, 1899), Stykmografie in practice (Lékařské rozhledy, 19032), Topographic percussion of the heart and methods of determining the actual size of the heart (MCP, 1906). As co-editor, he participated for seven years in the preparation of the Medical Dictionary.
He married the daughter of a merchant from Prague, Julie Marie (nee Rottová), and on 26 April 1905 they had a son, Ivan Veselý, who later joined the resistance during the Nazi occupation, for which he was sentenced by martial court and executed on 4 June 1942 in the Kounické koleje dormitories in Brno.
During World War I, from 7 October 1914 until 27 September 1919, Antonín Veselý was the head (Commander) of the Military Hospital for Infectious Diseases at Karlov in Prague[…] During the World War from 1914‒1919, he equipped and led as commander the hospital for infectious diseases at Karlov in Prague, where thousands of various cases of infectious diseases were treated, and which he transformed after the political changes into a hospital for tuberculosis cases.
After the creation of Czechoslovakia, Antonín Veselý remained as an adjunct professor of internal medicine at the Medical Faculty of Charles University, with the duty to teach medical propedeutics; and he also studied the issue of tuberculosis. The need to establish an independent clinic for teaching clinical propedeutics and for the practical training of medical students remained as urgent after the war as it had been in previous years. […] The auditoriums of both internal disease clinics of the Czech Faculty of Medicine are overcrowded; three associate professors of auscultation and percussion have many more students than they can really teach; nor are the regular afternoon rounds sufficient for this number of students, despite being carried out three times a week at both clinics by assistants and secondary doctors of both clinics. And a clinic teacher time and time again encounters the problem of students lacking the knowledge of basic clinical terms - a problem which would be solved by a propedeutic clinic - as well as the knowledge of the most essential examination methods: palpation, percussion and auscultation. Given the present situation, with the immense number of students coming to our faculty, including foreigners, the establishment of a propedeutic clinic has become an indispensable and urgent requirement of the present day. On the recommendation of the Committee for the establishment of a propedeutic clinic, addressed to the Faculty of Medicine’s professoriate, a proposal for the establishment of a propedeutics clinic was submitted to the Ministry of Education, together with the proposal to appoint Antonín Veselý the head of the clinic. On 18 July 1921, the proposal was approved and Veselý became the head of the established clinic, which was, due to his considerable efforts (e.g. finding premises, assistants), opened to the public in December 1921. He gave the initial lecture on the Czech propedeutic clinic and its programme (published in MCP, 1921). On 16 February 1925, by the decree of president T. G. Masaryk, Antonín Veselý was named a full professor of medical propedeutics at the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University, with effect from 28 October 1924. In March 1932 Antonín Veselý was further appointed a full professor of the special pathology of and therapy for internal diseases. He remained a head of the propedeutic clinic until his death in 1932.
Besides his lectures, participation in symposia, membership in various associations and the publication of his studies, his most significant achievement was the publication of a two-volume textbook for medical students and practitioners, Physical examination methods and medical technology, published between 1902 and 1907, with a new, supplemented edition published in the mid-1920s.
Antonín Veselý’s organizational skills were evident at the 1st Health and Sociology Medical Congress in Prague (1919), where he figured as secretary general. Further, he was secretary general at the 1st Czechoslovak Balneological Congress in Prague, president of the Sociology and Medicine Congress in Mukacheve (1922), vice-chairman of the organizational committee of the 1st Anti-tuberculosis Congress in Prague (1923), and a member of the Central Union of Czech Physicians; and he was significantly involved in the foundation of the Masaryk League Against Tuberculosis, of which he later became vice-chairman. He participated in the Medical Congresses in Monaco (1920) and Brussels (1922). […] With Prof. Pešina and Dr. Semerád he founded “Comité medicale slave” in 1900, and was profusely active in all the major events of this small but greatly influential association, which actuated the cultural medical life of all Slavic nations and whose importance did not cease even after the restoration of our independence.
Antonín Veselý was also an honorary member of Towarzystva lekarskiego Krakowskiego (Krakow Medical Association), a corresponding member of Sboru liečnika kraljevina Hrvatské i Slavonije (Association of Physicians of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia), a member of the Balneology Association of Czechoslovakia in Prague (and the editor of its journal), advisory member of De l´union internationale contre la tuberculose à Paris (International Union against Tuberculosis in Paris), an honorary member of the Yugoslav Medical Association in Belgrade, and the holder of the Order of St. Sava. He died on 27 May 1932 at the age of 69. He was buried in the family grave in Olšany cemetery.