Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)

VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"

IMPORT OF CHILDBED FEVER

203

when absorbed causes child-bed fever, is produced within the limits of the affected organism. These are the cases of self-infection, and these cases cannot all be prevented.

The source whence the decomposed animal organic material is derived from without is the cadaver of any age, of either sex, without regard to the antecedent disease, without regard to the fact whether the dead body is that of a puerperal or non-puerperal woman. Only the degree of putrefaction (Fäulniss) of the cadaver has to be taken into consideration. . . .

The sources of the decomposed animal organic material which, conveyed to the individual from without, causes puerperal fever, are all diseases whatever the age or sex if only the disease in its progress produces a decomposed animal organic material, without regard to the fact whether the patient suffered from puerperal fever or not: only the decomposed animal organic material as a disease-product has to be taken into consideration. ,

The case of medullary cancer of the uterus and the foul-smelling knee-joint are once more mentioned in illustration.

“ In the lying-in portion of the St. Rochus Hospital at Pesth it was the most heterogeneous surgical diseases whose putrid products gave rise to child-bed fever.”

The sources whence is derived the decomposed animal organic material which, when brought to the individual from without, produces puerperal fever, are all physiological animal organic structures which when withdrawn from the laws of vitality have undergone a certain degree of decomposition. What the object actually represents is of no importance; it is the degree of putridity which has to be considered.

.... At the Obstetric Clinic of the Faculty of Medicine at Pesth, it was physiologic human blood and normal lochia which were the etiological factor of the puerperal fever, inasmuch as they were left for a long