Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
2Ó4 AS GYNECOLOGIST simple operation of removing a fibroid polypus of the uterus, and the patient died with all the symptoms of puerperal fever. Chiari’s explanation was that the genius epidemicus was sometimes so malignant as to carry off even women who wrere neither pregnant nor lying-in. This incident reverted to the mind of Semmelweis after his discovery of the cause of puerperal fever, and be brought it under the category of infection and blood dissolution produced by decomposed animal organic matter, conveyed to the site of the wound during operation. He had still the energy to work at the teaching of gynaecology, and he was the first to make the study popular in Hungary. By the employment of antisepsis he was on the path to the introduction into operative gynaecology of the measures of prevention against infection with which we are now so familiar, and which we associate with the name of Lister. Semmelweis introduced the principles, and but for adverse circumstances the application of them w7ould soon have developed into prominence. He was convinced that pyaemia and puerperal fever were identical processes, and he endeavoured to secure the greatest cleanliness in his gynaecological operations, so as to prevent the conveyance, by hands or instruments of the germs of infection to his patients. In the controversy with Seyfert1 he recalls the incident of the death of a patient with polypus of the uterus, who died of pyaemia in the hands of Chiari in Vienna. Seyfert had asserted that pyaemia was never observed in the gynaecological departments of hospitals : Semmelweis retorted that the statement only proved that Seyfert was a bad observer. “ If a blind man does not see colours, that does not prove the non-existence of colours “To keep to the illustration of uterine polypus; how often do such patients die of pyaemia before operation, how often do they die of pyaemia after excision ? I have 1. Aetiologie, p. 421.
