Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
254 OPEN LETTERS to shut up the lying-in hospitals, the writer says : “It is not the lying-in hospitals which must be abolished in order to keep the lying-in women in good health, but all the professors of midwifery who are epidemicists must be cashiered if the lying-in women are to be preserved in health. ... I hold the opinion that in order to prevent the manslaughter of thousands and thousands of lying-in women and infants, the dismissal of a couple of dozen professors is not worthy of consideration. “ Herr Hofrath, I know you as a man of extremely kind disposition; I am convinced that it is not possible for you to do intentionally a thing disagreeable to any man .............I entreat you, Herr Hofrath, to acquire an i ntimate knowledge of the truth as it is set forth in my book, so that according to your kindly disposition you may be able to find support for new opinions in the bright faces of your lying-in patients and—in an empty dead-house. . . . “ In the ‘ JEtiologie . . . des Kindbettfiebers ’ there is no longer anything obscure; on the nature of puerperal fever clear sunlight has been shed; not a single point is now a mere hypothesis; in the future on these three points nothing requires further explanation.” After going over in the Open Letter the three sources of decomposed animal organic matter whence infection may spring, as in the Aütiologie, Semmelweis proceeds to sum up : “ Puerperal fever is therefore not a contagious disease; puerperal fever is a disease conveyed to the healthy lying-in woman by means of a decomposed material the sources of which we have just now enumerated.” Semmelweis also proposed to Siebold that they should arrange for a meeting of German obstetricians in some German city in the month of August of September, 1861, and debate the question, for he held the confident belief that he would convert to his opinion every participator in the proceedings. It need hardly be said that no notice was ever taken of this proposal by Siebold or any teacher of midwifery in Germany.
