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1818

BRIGHT, RICHARD. Travels from Vienna through Lower Hungary, with some remarks on the state of Vienna during the Congress in the year 1814. Edinburgh: A. Constable, 1818.

In this early nineteenth-century travelogue through a Hungary seldom part of the "Grand Tour," the future father of the study of renal disease describes a land of Esterhazy palaces and wandering gypsies, cattle and horse breeding on the vast plains, and obscure villages in which he had to communicate in Latin since he could not speak Hungarian, Sclavonian, or Wallachian. A keen observer of people, mores, and the flora and fauna he encountered, he describes them all to create an authoritative guidebook of the period. He even includes commentaries on the government regulations of the country. Most impressive is evidence of his indefatigable good spirits despite poor lodgings, muddy roads, and a general population as yet far removed from the cultural and scientific progress of the century. His stay in Vienna includes a visit with Empress Marie-Louise and the infant King of Rome, a Beethoven concert, and bumping into crowned heads at every street corner. Again he makes clear that he was, as the Edinburgh Review described him in 1818, "a very amiable and intelligent man who had observed with the utmost diligence everything remarkable that came within the sphere of his observation." The experience he gained while putting his impressions on paper was of great value later when he was recording his observations on disease.

View of Buda and port of Pesth, sketched by Richard Bright, who became renowned for his study of renal disease, revealed himself to be a keen observer of the people, mores, and the flora and fauna he encountered in this early nineteenth-century travelogue of the Austrian Empire.