Szegedi Ash (Fraxinus) Gaspar

* Szeged, between 1525–1530 – † Bratislava, August 6, 1563 / physician ; ; We know little about his life, only the place of his birth is known, and there are mostly speculations about the date. He probably studied medicine at the University of Padua between 1546–1552 with the help of noble patrons, and was ordained a doctor of medicine in Perugia on November 30, 1552. During his university studies, in 1548 – under unknown circumstances and for unknown reasons – he visited the island of Crete, and then Calabria. He returned from Padua to Hungary sometime in 1553 and entered the service of Palatine Tamás Nádasdy (1498–1562). He was the family physician for nine years, and many people attribute it to his merit that Orsolya Kanizsay Nádasdy (1521–1571) gave birth to her only child, Ferenc Nádasdy (1555–1604), the “Black Beg”, after twenty years of marriage. This period of Kőrös’s life can be reconstructed based on the letters he wrote to his lord and mistress. In addition, his letters to others are known, as he wanted to buy a house in Sopron for himself and his mother and siblings, who had been forced to flee from the Turks in Szeged, and he exchanged numerous letters on this matter with the owner of the house and the magistrate of Sopron, who finally officially accepted him as a citizen of Sopron on March 8, 1555. A year later, however, he was already looking for a suitable house in Bratislava, and disagreements over tax matters with the Sopron prefecture must have played a role in this. Probably with the help of the Archbishop of Esztergom, Miklós Oláh, he finally managed to settle in Bratislava sometime around 1560, although he had already spent a lot of time here before, as Tamás Nádasdy was often called here by his office. If he did not stay here, then at the Nádasdyak estate in Sárvár, from where he diligently sent letters to his lord about the health of Orsolya Kanizsay. He married in 1561, leading the widow of a wealthy Bratislava citizen, Wolfgangus Mar Zsófia, to the altar. The woman brought two sons into the marriage and gave birth to a daughter for Kőrös, but the name of another daughter can be read in several earlier letters, but her origin is unclear. We have little reliable information about his medical activities, but it is assumed that he recognized Orsolya Kanizsay's benign uterine tumor and treated it to achieve the woman's pregnancy. He himself was also often ill, probably with malaria, but his early death was caused by a much more serious infectious disease, the plague, which raged in Bratislava several times in 1562–1563. According to his letters, Kőrös recognized the connection between mental and physical illnesses. György Purkircher succeeded him as the city physician.