Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
174 ANSELM MARTIN to mention some facts of his experience at the new lying- in institution of Munich. “After being tolerably free from the disease in the months of January and February, two patients were suddenly attacked on the same day with all the appearance of epidemic puerperal fever. They had both been cases of perfectly normal labour, and there was no apparent cause of the disease. After careful investigation it was discovered that an assistant, without the knowledge of the director of the hospital, had performed a postmortem examination in the dead-house, ‘ which was remote from the labour-room,’ and after careful washing and disinfection with chlorinated water had gone direct to the examination of these two parturient women. The assistant also admitted that an exactly similar incident occurred in December just before the first appearance of puerperal fever in the new hospital. We then have from Martin an account of an “epidemic,” and of the occupation of students, even of those resident in the Lying-in Hospital : they attended the other clinics, even the cases of typhus fever, and they practised in the anatomical department to such an extent that the air of the labour ward had sometimes a smell of the dissecting-room. ‘ To watch and prevent this state of matters is impossible.’ Such practices have prevailed always since 1824, and yet, in spite of the unfortunate condition of the Lying-in Hospital then, epidemic puerperal did not occur. “ On the present occurrence the Lying-in Hospital was closed for a time. ‘ With the arrival of the better season of the year the epidemic completely ceased.’ “ When the clinic began to be frequented by students again some rapidly fatal cases once more occurred, but they ceased at the end of the ‘ semester ’ when students ceased to attend the practice of the hospital. Yet the professor actually remarks on these facts : any relation with an infection by the students in these few cases is not admissible; they appear to be sporadic cases such as we often find at the end of an epidemic.” Semmelweis, on the other hand, says: “ No com-
