Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)

I. Introduction

I.

Introduction.

“ In the history of Midwifery there is a dark page, and it is headed “Semmelweis” ! What man could close his eyes to the powerful impression of his book ? Even now at the present time there are whole pages of his deductions which might stand in the most modern work. And the annihilating logic of his statistics! We younger men for whom antipathies were unthinkable, to whom the reading of coarse tirades about “genius misunderstood,” was only tedious, we often find it incomprehensible that the logical conclusions of the doctrine of infection were nowhere drawn : I mean the local treatment; it was the key-stone of the arch, the crown of the whole structure .... The efficient application of disinfection midwifery owes without doubt to surgery : most certainly it ought to have been the reverse. If the conclusions and counsels of Semmelweis had been followed, then the truth of his doctrine would have been demonstrated in the compelling language of statistics, and so perhaps Obstetrics would have stood in the forefront of the greatest advance in Medicine which has been made since physicians and physic came into existence.”

Such are the generous but justly appreciative terms in which Fritsch,* then of Breslau, referred to the author of the “Die Ätiologie, der Begriff, und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers” a quarter of a century since.

The claim which Fritsch made for the Semmelweis Doctrine and its practical applications must be conceded by all unprejudiced men, who are fairly well acquainted with the history of Obstetrics. In the whole History of Medicine we find a clear record of only two discoveries of the highest importance in producing direct and

* “ Pathologie und Therapie des Wochenbetts,” 1884.

B