Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VII. Last Illness and Death
E. MARTIN 285 the alleged cause of puerperal fever, according to Semmelweis, and he actually believed that he himself discovered that the infecting matter might come from putrefactive changes essentially belonging to the putrefactive process itself. “ Moreover, the infecting substance may come from the pus and ichor generated in various forms of disease. Again, experience teaches us that infection may take place by means of the patient’s clothes, or through instruments, sponges, bed-linen, bedding and the like; and, to make the pile complete, by the air entering with the finger or instrument introduced into the vagina or uterus, perhaps even by means of air entering by aspiration.” There is not an idea in all this that was not expressed repeatedly, and insisted on many years before even in the first publication of the discovery by Hebra, and all the error so injurious to Semmelweis is retained a quarter of a century after the appearance of the JEtiologie. The drei Quellen of decomposed animal matter recurs many a score of times in the AUtiologie and the Breife and everywhere from the first publication of Hebra’s article in 1847. In spite of the vast service rendered to midwifery in Germany, and later throughout the civilized world, by the work of Hirsch, we are driven to the painful conclusion that Hirsch did not know the writings of Semmelweis at first-hand. E. Martin, 1860-66. The Doctrine of Semmelweis met with a different reception from three different types in the medical profession in Germany. To the first belonged his personal friends in Vienna, who saw the discovery growing. Ot such were Skoda, Rokitansky and Hebra, who “ did not doubt for a moment ” its justice and truth. Of the second class were the bitter irreconcileable antagonists, like Scanzoni and Carl Braun, with their juniors in some measure dependent upon them. To this class belonged Zipfel, Lumpe, Seyfert, Silberschmidt, Breisky. These resisted the spirit: no evidence could
