Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
222 ETIOLOGY “ The clothes of the medical practitioner do not come into contact with the genitals of the patient, so that the habit of English accoucheurs in changing their clothes, so as not to spread the fever, is a harmless but superfluous precaution.” ... In order that puerperal fever may arise, it is conditio sine qua non that the decomposed matter comes into contact with the genitals, therefore all possible examinations are devoid of danger to the patient except the exploratio obstetrica interna. There is something pathetic in the proof of this statement : it consists in a reference to the results of the year’s work at the First Obstetric Clinic of Vienna in 1848 which are evidently accepted as bordering on perfection : “ I and the students in Vienna in 1848 never changed our clothing after being occupied with things possessed of properties which made them capable of producing childbed fever; we only thoroughly disinfected our hands by chlorine washing, and in the year 1848 we lost only 45 patients out of 3,556, that is, in the proportion of 1*27 per cent. !” Compared with the past and the succeeding ten years this result might well seem the highest possible success. Yet in the same hospital the mortality is to-day only a twentieth part of that which gave Semmelweis such satisfaction. There is next a long and tedious recapitulation of all the arguments already employed to disprove the old doctrine of epidemic influences in the production of puerperal fever. “ I cannot believe that any man who is in earnest about the truth can believe in the doctrine of epidemic puerperal fever, except up to the moment when the want of harmony between the doctrine and the data are made clear to him. The man who, in spite of the data still professes to believe in epidemic puerperal fever, has not the courage to stand up for the truth ... the man who, in spite of the data, still actually believes in epidemic puerperal fever . . . has no capacity for understanding and reasoning; he carries about with him only words learned by note and stored in his memory.”
