Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VII. Last Illness and Death
300 OBSTETRICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON surgery the incidence of puerperal fever in particular appeared to become more general and more marked. The chaotic state of English opinion on puerperal fever was well shewn in the great debate in the Obstetrical Society of London in 1875. The Discussion* began at the April meeting and continued to July . and during its course the chief authorities in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Great Britain, and some who were not authorities on anything, gave ample expression to their opinions. The discussion was on the “Relation of Puerperal Fever to the Infective Diseases.” Spencer Wells, in opening the debate, quoted from the Nomenclature of Diseases the definition of the term puerperal fever as given by a Committee of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and considered it to be the most accurate and comprehensive. The definition is this: “A continued fever communicable by contagion in connexion with childbirth, and often associated with extensive local lesions, especially of the uterine system.” Spencer Wells stated, in the course of his address : “I must ask you to say if, in your experience, you ever saw such a case which could not, on careful inquiry, be traced to exposure of the patient to some one or other of the contagious or infectious fevers—to scarlet fever or diphtheria —to measles or smallpox ? I need not remind you how these diseases are intensified or modified by the puerperal condition; and I proceed to ask if, in any case where puerperal fever could not be proved to be really scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, or smallpox, occurring in connection with childbirth, it was not a traumatic or surgical fever, erysipelas, pyaemia, or septicaemia; the local lesions associated with the fever assuming rather a primary than a secondary importance in the chain of sequence.” After reference to the appearance presented by the visible parts injured during parturition, he asks : Does * Trans, of the Obstetrical Society of London, 1875.
