Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
III. Life in Vienna
13 III. Life in Vienna. The General Hospital and the Lying-in Division. Retrospective. After Maria Theresa had reached a time of general peace, she devoted the remaining years of her life to the welfare of her subjects — fostering science and art, including medical science and the foundation of hospitals. It was she who laid the foundations of the lying-in hospitals of Vienna and of Milan, and four years after her death her son, the Emperor Joseph, established the great General Hospital of Vienna (Das allgemeine Krankenhaus), including the famous Lying- in Hospital, which was from the beginning the largest of its kind in the world. Special attention appears to have been given to midwifery instruction in Austria both by Maria Theresa and her son in order to make amends for the barbarous past, a time not so remote, when the teaching of midwifery had almost entirely ceased in Austria. Maria Theresa had sent Crantz to the West, to Paris and London, in order to acquire a knowledge of modern midwifery. The object was to enable him to instruct his fellow-countrymen on his return home. Crantz appears to have come under the influence of Levret in Paris, and Smellie in London, hence the prevalence of instrumental delivery in Vienna until the time of Boer. Joseph II., the autocratic reforming Emperor, continuing the policy of his mother, sent Lucas Johann Boer to France and the United Kingdom to learn the secret of the success of English midwifery practice. Boer, after visiting Paris, worked for a whole year in London, and associated with Denman and his contemporaries. On his return in 1788 he was appointed professor of midwifery and director of the new lying-in hospital.
