Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VII. Last Illness and Death
284 HIRSCH under the heading of the Forerunners of Semmelweis. It is worthy of note, amidst the vast amount of evidence founded on observations which could easily have been trebled, that Hirsch mentions the name of O. Wendell Holmes as supplying only two facts to the amount of his evidence. This is at least curious considering some things which have been written about Oliver Wendell Holmes in recent years. Hirsch goes on to say : “ The significance which they (the observations) seem to me unquestionably to possess is in proving experimentally the origin of puerperal fever by direct conveyance of a noxious substance .... without any need for assuming there had been influences of a general kind at work in the pathogenesis. It is the great merit of Semmelweis to have solved the problem in this sense by exact research.” After summarising the history of puerperal fever in the Vienna Hospital, the author proceeds to say that in this way Semmelweis founded the doctrine of the septic nature of puerperal fever. At the same time he laid emphasis on the local character of the infection, by proving that the infective matter was conveyed by the hand of the practitioner or midwife; and thus he provided a basis for the doctrine that childbed fever is a traumatic septic process to which every puerpera is liable. . . . The conclusion which Semmelweis drew from these facts was no doubt onesided, inasmuch as he traced the sepsis exclusively to transmission of the so-called cadaveric poison. On this admirably impartial and almost complete work of Hirsch two points require to be noted, one important the other comparatively trifling. These must, however, seriously detract from the value of Hirsch’s work for the inquiring and critical reader. One point is that Hirsch appears to have entirely missed the difference between the gropings of the contagionists and the clear and definite doctrine of Semmelweis. The second point against Hirsch is serious. He repeatedly refers to the doctrine of Semmelweis as “one-sided.” Hirsch only knew of cadaveric poison as
