Dr. Stevan Vasić was born in Ruma in 1810 and died in Vranjevo on January 24, 1875. Vasa Stajić writes the following about him: He was born in Ruma in 1810, where his father was a merchant. Stevan completed his education as follows: he attended the first grade in Ruma, the second grade and the first semester of the third grade in Karlovci in 1824-25, completed the third, fourth, and fifth grades in Novi Sad, and in 1832, he taught in Serbia. In 1833-34, at the age of 24, he finished the sixth grade in V. Varad. It is not known where he studied philosophy, but he completed his medical studies in Pest as a Tekelijanac.
In 1843, he is mentioned as a doctoral candidate in Vienna. Finally, Vasa Stajić states that on August 1, 1842, Sava Tekelija presided over a meeting of Matica and presented a receipt from the medical graduate Stefan Vasić, who acknowledged receiving 200 forints of silver from Tekelija "under the condition that he undertakes a literary journey and extends it for 10 years; in the event of non-compliance, he is obliged to return the sum to Tekelija's institution within 3 years."
V. Stajić states that he does not know whether Dr. Vasić returned the 200 forints to Tekelija's institution. "We have heard," he says, "that he indeed traveled for a long time as a doctor on a Lloyd steamship, which is all the more likely since we find him in Trieste in 1861."
To supplement Stajić's account, we will quote what Dr. E. Lindenmair, then head of civil sanitation in Serbia, wrote about Vasić. He says that Dr. Stevan Vasić was admitted as a foreigner on April 1, 1846, in the position of a contractual physician in Kruševac, but Vasić left this position after one year in 1847.
According to Vasa Stajić's further assertions, Dr. Stevan Vasić served in Karlovac hospitals at the beginning of the Uprising but resigned from this position on October 28, 1848, and was arrested by "people's justice" for publicly dishonoring Dr. Marko Jovanović without cause, expelling the military hospital's cook without the Main Committee's knowledge, and "improperly mistreating" the entire monastic order in front of the public. "Moreover, during his arrest, he insulted the duke, escaped from prison, broke doors, and was sentenced by the people's justice to be 'severely reprimanded' before the patriarch and the duke."
This is according to Vasa Stajić. Mr. Kosta Petrović, curator of the Sremski Karlovci Museum, found in the Metropolitan Archive a draft document numbered 2522, in which "Dr. Stefan Vasić, director of the People's Hospital in Karlovci, submits his resignation on October 28, 1848, out of indignation that Dr. Miloš Radoičić was appointed head of the Sanitation of Vojvodina Srpska, a man who had not shown sufficient capability even for hospital regulations." The Main Committee accepted his resignation and appointed Dr. Josif Janković as director of the said hospital, instructing the Sanitation Department that Dr. Vasić must hand over the hospital inventory to the police officer Mr. Kosta Jovanović."
Before his brief directorship in Karlovci, he is mentioned on October 6, 1848, as a "resident of Ruma," then in 1857 in Belgrade, in 1861 in Trieste, and from December 26, 1861, as a municipal doctor in Vranjevo, where he died on January 24, 1875.

Comments