Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
196 PREPARATION OF THE ÄTIOLOGIE this Treatise is to set forth historically the observations made in the Clinic, and to explain how I began to doubt the truth of the prevalent teaching with regard to Puerperal Fever. ... It may be considered a proof of my aversion to polemics that I have left unanswered so many attacks, but I believed that I could leave the truth to open the way for itself. After waiting for thirteen years I find that the amount of progress has not been made which is necessary for the welfare of mankind. . . . “To this disinclination for every thing polemical there is added an inborn dislike for everything that can be called writing (gegen Alles was schreiben heisst). “But fate has selected me as the champion of the Truth which is expounded in this Treatise, and there is a duty laid upon me which I cannot refuse to perform.” The account of the elimination of alleged factors and of the discovery itself is of engrossing interest, and it is also of permanent value to the medical profession throughout the world as showing the advantages of philosophic doubt, and of the application of logical method in the endeavour to ascertain the causes of the phenomena of disease. Much of the controversial matter might have been omitted without disadvantage, but it is also interesting biographically and psychologically in exhibiting the mental and emotional changes produced in the writer by neglect, misrepresentation and slights amounting in his mind to persecution. It has the drawback of preserving the names and controversial methods of some infinitely little men among his official professional contemporaries which would have been better consigned to oblivion. The work as a whole was written in the German language but considerable portions of it were published during the course of preparation in Hungarian in the “ Orvosi hetilap.” One of the most interesting of these articles published in 1858 was entitled : “The Difference between my opinions and those of English Obstetricians on the Etiology of Puerperal Fever.” This article is perhaps the most important of all those
