Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
III. Life in Vienna
SEMMELWEIS AS ASSISTANT 14 Joseph II., “after seeing all his undertakings ruined,” died in 1790, and left Boer to struggle on for over thirty years of reaction under the most serious discouragements. But he was remarkably successful, and he prevented serious losses among his patients in the lying-in hospital from puerperal fever. It was Boer who introduced the principles of English midwifery into Vienna. In his last year, 1822, as professor and director of the institution, the deaths among 3,066 patients amounted to 26, that is, a mortality of C84 per cent. Boer was succeeded by Klein, a Höfling, and former assistant, and perhaps the least fitted of all the candidates for the appointment. His career from first to last appears to have depended upon official favour. Klein weakly consented to teach midwifery even to midwives by demonstrations on the cadaver instead of the phantom, a thing that Boer refused to do, and in his first year of office 237 patients out of 3,036 died from puerperal fever, a mortality of 7‘8 per cent. Such was in brief the earliest record of Professor Klein under whom Semmelweis took service as full assistant in 1846. Some time about 1840 the Lying-in Hospital had been much enlarged and divided into two Clinics, one for students of medicine, the other for midwives. After the division the results of practice in the two Clinics could be compared, and the mortality in the First Clinic, up to the time when Semmelweis entered upon his duties, was always about three times that of the School for Midwives. The opportunity of comparing the two Clinics, which seemed to the superficial observer to be identical in every respect, was an important factor in solving the enigma of the cause and nature of puerperal fever. It amounted in some measure to research by experiment. Semmelweis as Assistant. In the end of February, 1846, Semmelweis became provisional assistant in the First Obstetric Clinic. Rarely has a man entered upon the responsible practical duties of his profession so well equipped by a ground
