Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
212 ETIOLOGY such a rush to the Lying-in Hospital in the Winter months that many have to wait their turn for a long time before they have the opportunity of attending cases. In the Summer time, on the other hand, from half to two-thirds of the places were usually unoccupied. In the winter season the students were all busy with pathological anatomy and medico-legal post-mortem examinations, while students attending the midwifery clinic were also fully engaged in the Medical and Surgical departments of the General Hospital. In the Summer time all these occupations were to a large extent neglected. The beautiful country surrounding Vienna had greater attractions for students than the foul-smelling dead-house or the sultry wards of the hospital . . . The cold and darkness of Winter and the heat of Summer in turn have their effects on the relative time of dissecting and visiting the patients in the lying-in hospital, and all the arrangements are productive of puerperal infection when the students are numerous, but in Summer they are comparatively few. Was there no Winter in Vienna during the twenty-five years when the mortality in the Lying-in Hospital averaged less than i per cent ? In the Winter of 1847-48 and 1848-49, there was no epidemic as a result of the chlorine disinfection. At the St. Rochus hospital in Pesth, midwifery cases were admitted only in August and September, yet every year it was ravaged by a puerperal fever “epidemic.” After calling attention to the fact that there are lying- in hospitals in all climates, and that these are impartially visited by so-called epidemics of puerperal fever, the incidence of puerperal fever in teaching institutions, and the sparing of those lying-in hospitals where midwives only are admitted for training; the introduction of decomposed matter where no teaching at all is carried on, as for example in the paying department of the Vienna Lying-in Hospital, which is hermetically sealed to all medical men except its own staff, and where none but
