Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
194 SILBERSCHMIDT put his hands to. “ Silberschmidt has compiled this contribution not as a thoughtful investigator but as a writing-machine.” He supports the views of Kiwisch about puerperal fever epidemics, and he copies Scan- zoni’s pathology of puerperal fever—hyporinosis, pyaemia, and blood-dissolution including the exclusion of even fatal metritis and endometritis from the category of puerperal fever. The whole production is a stupid ill-conditioned attack by a sycophant for which his master must be held largely responsible. Curiously enough the award of a prize to this essay proves that the author’s backers, Scanzoni and Company, did not know even the German literature of their own subject, or that they connived at plagiarism. v. Winckel* in his admirable summary of the history of puerperal fever says: ‘‘Eisenmann (1837) was the first to attempt the exposition of the various theories of puerperal fever: his work is the prize-essay of Dr. Silberschmidt (1859) who copies him almost verbally in very many passages (an sehr vielen Stellen fast wörtlich gefolgt).” Returning later to Silberschmidt and Scanzoni Semmelweis says: ‘‘Silberschmidt had to prove that my opinions about the causation of puerperal fever are erroneous. In order to prove this Silberschmidt calls attention to the want of success of chlorine disinfection employed by Scanzoni at Prague, and also to the unfavourable observations of Kiwisch at Würzburg. . . . If my opinions are true then is the Scanzoni pathology of puerperal fever colossal nonsense. . . . This pathology must be presented to the world as the flower of the endeavour of centuries, and whatever stands in the way of this design must receive no mercy, not even the Truth itself. . . . Du lieber Gott, when will puerperal fever cease to spread over whole provinces when by means of such unconscientious disingenuous opposition the medical practitioners scattered over whole provinces are befooled.” * Die Pathologie und Therapie des Wochenbetts (1866).
