Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
166 VIRCHOW as a revolutionist was fleeing from Berlin for life and freedom in exile beyond the boundaries of Prussia. Virchow ultimately came round to appreciate the Semmelweis doctrine, but his influence in the meantime had' done much to retard the practical adoption of the principles of Semmelweis in Germany. Virchow’s adoption of the doctrine of Semmelweis was declared in 1864, but his support came too late to comfort the unhappy author. It was the opinions published in 1856 which roused the resentment of the author of the Lehre. Semmelweis (/Etiologie, p. 468) says : “ Rudolf Virchow says, in his collected contributions to scientific medicine, “Natural science research knows no more frightful image than the person who speculates (als den Kerl der speculirt). Boér had formulated the same truth in this way, when speaking of Hippocrates; “If in every century instead of so many system-builders one observant physician such as he had arisen, how much more would have been gained for mankind.’’ Boer, the author of the seven books on Natural Labour, had a right so to speak. But Virchow, who on account of his numerous speculations, is himself a frightful image for Natural Science research; Virchow, who is such a bad observer that as pathological anatomist he could not even in the year 1858 recognise the traces of a resorption fever in the cadaver of a victim to childbed fever; Virchow has no right to speak unless according to his humour in a moment of jovial straightforwardness he sought to characterise himself. “The expression of Virchow about the fellow who speculates’’ stands amidst a long series of contributions on puerperal diseases which Virchow seeks to supply but is unable to supply; he speaks in his introduction about menstruation, conception and pregnancy as of things which stand in some causal relationship with puerperal fever. The anatomist, the surgeon, the subject of a surgical operation, the newly-born suckling male or female, who
