Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
MARKUSOVSZKY 235 language, remained unknown to Western Europe for many years, until it was translated and published by Bruck.1 \ Markusovszky wrote: “The investigation into the etiology of puerperal fever is not yet complete; so much is certain. It would not be complete even if the source of infection of puerperal fever were universally recognised to be due to decomposed animal matter. Even the definition of the disease which Semmelweis employed must be considered provisional, inasmuch as the elements entering into it—the import of pyaemia, of absorption and of fever—still form subjects for research. In our opinion it has still to be demonstrated by a process of exact investigation what is the nature of that organic material which produces the infection, and what are its histological and chemical relations ... in what particular manner it obtains access to the organism : wrhat manner of chemical and physiological changes are thereby produced; what are the conditions of resorption, and of its active influence since it does not seem to occur in all cases; what is the nature of the physiological processes by the combination of which puerperal fever occurs sometimes without any exudation in one case, and in another case with the accompaniments of extensive exudation and metastases.............All these questions must be cleared up, and that is a task for the obstetricians to perform ? And are we to draw the inference that because the new doctrine has not as yet been explained in every detail that it is therefore false, and that the ancient definiteness of epidemic darkness is to be preferred ? When we consider how much the opinions about pyaemia have changed in our own days, how the knowledge of embolism, in spite of the progressof pathological anatomy, is an achievement of only the most recent date . . . we certainly cannot demand from the relatively new knowledge, and from a single individual, the solution of all the questions to which answers can only be 1. Bruck, Semmelweis, p. 93.
