Tomb of István Boleman

István Boleman, János Boleman of Dezsér, was born in Léva on March 22, 1843, the fifth of ten children of the Léva landowner, pharmacist and noblewoman Mária Braunmüller. He was a student of the Piarist junior high school in Léva between 1852 and 1856, and then completed high school in Selmecbánya and Bratislava. In 1865, he received his medical degree in Vienna. From 1875, he became a spa doctor in Vihny. In 1873, he married the widowed Bähr Károlyné Carolina Steinbach in Bratislava. They settled in Selmecbánya, where three sons were born: Vilmos (1874), Géza (1876) and Béla (1878). His wife died young in the autumn of 1879. With his professional knowledge and developments, he made the Vihnye spa nationally famous. In 1883, he initiated the drilling of the new healing spring. The rich scientific, publication and public activity of the spa doctor also contributed to the rise of Vihnye's reputation. ; Among his numerous balneological works, his 600-page work entitled "Balneology" stands out. He also laid the foundations of climate therapy in our country. In 1890, he became a member of the narrow leadership of the newly formed Hungarian Balneological Association, where he was an internationally recognized expert in spa statistics. He was well-respected, and was also elected a royal councilor and honorary chief physician of Bars County. He retired in 1904, and died in early 1905. (The doctor's son, Béla, was already an assistant professor at the University of Pest, and supposedly, in despair over his father's death, he poisoned himself with morphine the next day.) His grave can still be found in Selmecbánya, in the cemetery above Kopogó. The Bars County Medical and Pharmacist Association initiated the erection of a statue of István Boleman of Vihnye in the autumn of 1905. The bronze statue, which had survived many hardships, has unfortunately disappeared, but instead, a stone bust of István Boleman stands at the main entrance to the Vihnye Wellness Spa, reminding us of its great developer, whom his contemporaries called "the living encyclopedia of Hungarian spas".