Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
232 BREISKY of a puerperal creed which he preaches with fanatical zeal and enters into battle with threatenings of fire and sword for the unbelievers. Breisky is very sarcastic about the discoverer of the “ eternally true ” etiology of puerperal fever. In his opinion Semmelweis has not succeeded in producing anything like an exact and complete demonstration of the truth of his Lehre. He has not proved the identity of pyaemia and puerperal fever. Breisky then enters upon a destructive criticism of all the evidence brought forward by Semmelweis for the three lying-in hospitals to which he so often refers. Even infection by want of cleanliness of bedding, etc., at the St. Rochus Hospital at Buda-Pesth is called in question. Hardly any obstetrician except Semmelweis has observed any advantage from the method of prophylaxis recommended in the book, and the conclusion is therefore reached that cadaveric infection cannot be the cause of puerperal fever even in such cases as those described. Breisky then gives some more of the statistics almost characteristic of Prague, and concludes further that the attributes of the deleterious matter to which Semmelweis pins his faith do not account for the facts.,“ This is the fate which the etiology of childbed fever shares with that of so many pathological processes. There is the ‘ something ’ which is yet unknown in the etiology and has still to be discovered.” Then comes in some quotation from Dr. Charles West, as the typical medical philosopher, about the divinum aliquid, the to Seiov of Hippocrates, and the attempts that have been made in vain to read the riddle of Nature. This is the sort of pseudo-philosophic verbiage, much in vogue then among medical writers, and employed to conceal poverty of thought, and inability to generalise on facts. It is simply deplorable to find a young and able man like Breisky giving expression to such sentiments and opinions. He might have found it impossible to resist pressure from his chiefs, amounting to compulsion, to
