[Our disputes, divisions and conflicts about foundation of the School of Medicine in Belgrade].

Disputes, divisions and even conflicts, so frequent in Serbia, have not bypassed physicians-members of the Serbian Medical Society; ones of the most important occurred at the crossroad of the 19th and 20th centuries related to foundation of the School of Medicine in Belgrade. The most prominent and persistent advocate of foundation of the School of Medicine was Dr. Milan Jovanović Batut. In 1899, he presented the paper "The Medical School of the Serbian University". Batut's effort was worth serious attention but did not produce fruit. On the contrary, Dr. Mihailo Petrović criticized Batut by opening the discussion "Is the Medical School in Serbia the most acute sanitary necessity or not?" in the Serbian Archives, in 1900. However, such an attitude led to intervention of Dr. Doka Nikolić, who defended Batut's views. He published his article in Janko Veselinović's magazine "The Star". Since then up to 1904, all discussions about Medical School had stopped. It was not even mentioned during the First Congress of Serbian Physicians and Scientists. Nevertheless, at the very end of the gathering, a professor from Prague, Dr. Jaromil Hvala claimed that "the First Serbian Congress had prepared the material for the future Medical School", thus sending a message to the attendants of what importance for Serbia its foundation would have been. But the President of both the Congress and the Serbian Medical Society, as well as the editor of the Serbian Archives, Dr. Jovan Danić announced that "the First Congress of Serbian Physicians and Scientists had finished its work". It was evident that Danić belonged to those medical circles which jealously guarded special privileges of doctors and other eminent persons who had very serious doctrinal disagreements on the foundation of the Medical School. All that seemed to have grown into clash, which finally resulted in the fact that Serbia got Higher Medical School within the University of Belgrade with a great delay, only after the First World War.