Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VII. Last Illness and Death
BOEHR—V. WINCKEL 293 It is mere platitude to say that few writers on medical subjects have had the moral courage to admit mistakes, although such frankness would probably be the best of their ieaching influence. It is a thing to recall with pride that British Obstetrics has produced a dignified Peter Frank in Simpson of Edinburgh, and in Leishman of Glasgow. Boehr, 1868. So long and persistently had the old error with regard to the one-sidedness of the Lehre of Semmelweis been disseminated by the older teachers of midwifery, that the younger man accepted the error in good faith as the historic truth, and it became ineradicable, in Germany at least. In May, 1868, Dr. Boehr gave an address in the Berlin Obstetrical Society on the theory of infection of puerperal fever. “ My task to-day is to call your attention ... to the Species femina obstetrix infectrix ignorans, and to restrain their action. . . .” Then comes as usual the constantly reiterated error : “ In his work published in 1861 .... Semmelweis enlarged his ideas which originally attributed it to nothing except to a cadaveric principle by admitting as cause every putrid infection emanating from an organism living and diseased .... Then follows a very fair exposition of what the Semmelweis doctrine of the etiology really was as explained in Vienna from the publication of the first article of Hebra in 1847. v. Winckel, 1869. In the second edition of his work, published in 1869, Winckel maintained the old error with regard to Semmelweis, but he did good service in spreading the true doctrine in his references to ventilation : “Necessary as good ventilation is, it is never sufficient to permanently counteract the spread of puerperal processes in large lying-in hospitals, or to completely suppress it as Braun professes. The favourable results which have been obtained in Vienna, and ascribed to the ventilation apparatus, are certainly not owing to that
