Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
OPEN LETTERS 251 do you an injustice when, for the service of having been the first to oppose my life-saving Lehre it perpetuates your name as a medical Nero. TWO OPEN LETTERS TO HOFRATH DR. EDUARD CARP. JAC. V. SIEBOLD, PROFESSOR OF MIDWIFERY AT GÖTTINGEN, AND TO HOFRATH DR. F. W. SCANZONI, PROFESSOR OF MIDWIFERY AT WURZBURG. These letters contain nothing new concerning the Etiology of puerperal fever. But they are of interest as illustrating the controversial method employed in the effort to spread the knowledge of the Lehre, and they are remarkable as biography in indicating the eager longing aspirations of the writer for the triumph of his teaching as a life-saving message in the cause of humanity : they are of great interest too as a psychological study, inasmuch as they show the gradual exasperation of the once genial young Hungarian with the invincible ignorance and criminal negligence of the opponents in not accepting and applying the eternally true doctrine of conveyed infection. v. Siebold, then professor of midwifery at Göttingen, was the author of the classical work on the History of Obstetrics, which was translated into French and continued to near the end of the XIXth century by Herrgott, of Nancy. v. Siebold had made the acquaintance of Semmelweis during a visit to Vienna at the time when Semmelweis was assistant in the Lying-in Hispital. They became very good friends; and a few years later v. Siebold visited Buda-Pesth as the welcome guest of Semmelweis. In 1861 there appeared in a German obstetrical journal a contribution from v. Siebold on the subject of Puerperal Fever in which he attacked the Doctrine of Semmelweis. From the tone adopted by v. Siebold which was not unfriendly, a friendly remonstrance from Semmelweis might under ordinary circumstances have sufficed for the occasion. But Semmelweis was by this time becoming more than ever exasperated owing to the
