Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
IV. Spread of the Doctrine During the Vienna Period
BRÜCKE-SCHMIDT 87 since the full import of the discovery had been published to the world in the articles of Hebra. Although the omissions of Skoda were unfortunate, they did not justify the misrepresentations that were founded on them later. Semmelweis saw the omissions at once, but he was too loyal to Skoda to say a word in criticism, or in any way to supplement the address. He could not criticize his champion. The Imperial Academy of Sciences resolved to include Skoda’s address in their transactions, and ordered a special report to be prepared. Semmelweis was at once elected a member of the Imperial Academy. He and Brücke, Professor of Physiology, were offered a grant of money to enable them to pursue their investigations by further experiments on animals, but, as he have seen, Semmelweis considered further experiments superfluous in the view of the amount of conclusive evidence available from clinical observation. BRÜCKE-SCHMIDT. Skoda had made representations to men of influence in Prague regarding the application of the Semmelweis prophylaxis in order to reduce the shocking mortality in that city, and thereby brought a nest of hornets about his ears. He roused the animosity of the most vain and self-assertive teacher of midwifery in Europe. We shall see the consequences. Meanwhile Brücke wrote to his friend Professor Schmidt of the Berlin Charité with more fortunate results. No one could accuse Brücke of any interested partisanship. He appears to have been animated only by a desire to spread the beneficial truth of the Semmelweis doctrine, in which he sincerely believed. Semmelweis says of Brücke: “He is not a credulous man, but a fundamentally exact investigator.” His letter probably conveyed to North Germany the first information about the rise of the new doctrine, but Brücke appears to have mentioned only cadaveric poison as the cause of puerperal fever, the natural result of Skoda’s unfortunate statement of the case.
