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

VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"

BREISKY

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Kugelmann happened to possess a copy of Jenner’s work with his autograph; it had been a presentation copy from the author to Blumenbach of Göttingen, and he begged Semmelweis to accept it “as a mark of my unlimited respect.”

In a second letter Kugelmann says: “It has been vouchsafed to very few to confer great and permanent benefits upon mankind, and with few exceptions the world has crucified and burned its benefactors. . . .

“ I hope you will not grow weary in the honourable fight which still remains before you. . . .”

Letters direct or indirect from Dommes of Hanover, Prof. Pernice of Greifswald, and Pippingskjöld, of Helsingfors, complete the list referred to by Semmelweis.

Bruck says that the publication of Die FEtiologie hardly attracted any attention. In the medical press appeared only a few short notices, some of them by no means complimentary. An exception among the special journals was Froriep’s Notizen, which spoke of the Semmelweis discovery as the most important progressive step in medical science of modern times.

Markusovszky wrote a friendly appreciation in the Orvosi Hetilap, and Fleischer published a complete summary in another journal, but the Hungarian language was little read in the West of Europe, and the articles of Markusovszky were of comparatively little service to the spread of the Lehre.

Breisky. Among the earliest and most important of the unfavourable criticisms was the article by Breisky, an assistant at the Lying-in Hospital of Prague. This article is largely quoted by Bruck as typical of the state of opinion among obstetricians of eminence at the time when the FEtiologie appeared. The critic takes exception first of all to the self-consciousness of Semmelweis’s method of addressing the leading men whom he names in the Stimme. After years of silence he proclaims his discovery as the Koran