Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
188 TARNIER minds of the two men, and their consequent pursuits and achievements at an interval of ten years. We have seen that Tarnier’s thesis had been referred to in complimentary terms by some of the speakers in the great debate, including Dubois himself. That thesis was entitled “ Recherches sur Vetat puerperal et les maladies des femmes en couchesV’ When this thesis had served its purpose, Tarnier lost no time in publishing a treatise entitled “La fiévre puerperale observée á Vhospice de la Maternité,” in which he assumed a firmer and more independent tone. Tarnier as a young graduate entered the Maternité early in 1856. Later in one of his important works he tells about the spectacle which was there presented to his horrified vision. It would be hard to say which had the more shocking experience, Semmelweis or Tarnier. “In the course of this year there occurred at the Maternité 2,237 cases of labour with 132 deaths; that is to say i patient in 19 died, nearly 6 per cent. The mortality was not equally distributed throughout the months of the years. On some days and during some weeks it was enormous. . . . They sometimes died in fact at the average rate of five per day. . . . From the ist of May to the 10th there were 32 cases of labour, and we registered 31 deaths ! It was then decided to close the Maternité, but this radical measure was adopted rather late, for the malady had already carried off 64 of the 347 women confined from the ist of April to the 10th of May. . . . To a sympathetic and imaginative young man, it was a shocking, a heart-breaking spectacle. “ I made inquiries of my masters at the Maternité, Dubois, Danyau, Delpech. I said to them that it appeared to me impossible that such a mortality could be general, and that it could prevail equally in private practice. They assured me that the same condition of things prevailed in the city, and that the epidemic was then as severe there as in the hospital. “ That has
