Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VII. Last Illness and Death
290 SCANZONI A much more interesting reference is made by Veit to Vienna than to Carl Braun and Späth; that is to the work of Mayrhofer, who in the course of a series of observations published in 1863 to 1865 had come to the conclusion that it was the examining finger, and not the atmosphere, which was the carrier of the “vibriones.” Scanzoni, 1867. We have heard perhaps too much of Scanzoni in the controversy concerning puerperal fever. His special opinionson the causeand nature of the malady were never of any importance to the world : it was by reason of his official position and influence, as affecting the dissemination of the Lehre, and the personal feelings of Semmelweis himself, that Scanzoni has been of interest to unprejudiced observers of the controversy. Now when all the old opponents are more or less frankly admitting defeat and joining the stream of progress the attitude assumed by one of the most bitter and unscrupulous antagonists of Semmelweis becomes a subject rather of psychological, than of scientific interest. In producing a new edition of his Lehrbuch in 1867, it was necessary for Scanzoni to define his attitude toward the Semmelweis Doctrine. He went through the painful ordeal according to the methods of controversialists of his kind. “ We must look upon it as an achievement of recent times that the import (Begriff) of this extremely pernicious . . . malady has been now more exactly determined. ... To the untiring research of the last ten years, we are indebted for the fact that puerperal fever is now almost unanimously considered to be an infectious disease, which ... is essentially characterised by the symptoms either of pyaemia or of sepsis, preceded by the admission of products of putrid decomposition of animal matter into the blood-mass. . . . It is by no means a new conception that compares every newly-delivered woman as a wounded person presenting not one but a very important number of wounds............. The untenability of the hypothesis that puerperal fever can be spread by means of a contagium is now placed
