[Jan Ewangelista Purkynie in medicine, science and the Polish culture]

The author refers to the place of Jan Ewangelista Purkynie (1787-1868) in the world science and the Czech national culture. Numerous discoveries of Purkynie have still bear his name, e.g. fibers of the hearth conduction system. In the years 1823-1850 he worked as professor of the Department of Physiology in Wrocław and he distinguished himself as a scientist of wide horizons and modern ideas, as well as a teacher and protector of his students. The periodical Opera Omnia that has been published in Prague from 1938 (until now 13 volumes have been published) in volume number six, known as the Wroclaw volume, offers to us works of Purkynie's fourteen doctoral students. One of the them was Bogusław Palicki (1813-1868), author of the doctoral thesis entitled De musculari cordic structura. In 1839 the "Rocznik Wydziału Lekarskiego w Uniwersytecie Jagiellońiskim" /Yearbook of the Jagiellonian University Faculty of Medicine/ published a work describing the fibers of the conductions system of the heart which anticipated a similar work in German. Purkynie had numerous contacts with the liberal Krakow, he visited the health resort in Cieplice where he met Wincenty Pol and Kornel Ujejski. His contacts with Poznański had both scientific and literary character. He was also in touch with Warsaw and the Congress Kingdom. There are also traces of his contacts with the Polish emigration in Paris, which had an interdisciplinary character. The scientific ideas of Purkynie have still been a source of inspiration for Czech and Polish scientists which is confirmed by numerous symposiums and congresses dedicated to him.