Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VII. Last Illness and Death
304 OBSTETRICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON tarded in their recovery by secondary effects such as cellulitis, phlegmasia, etc. Quoting a paper of his own, the speaker said that out of 89 cases he had found that 68 cases had been connected with some animal poison : of the 68 more than half had been connected with scarlatina “in one way or another.” Amongst the remainder erysipelas, diphtheria, and an offensive state of the discharges were prominent. Of 21 cases there was no definite history respecting zymotic disease . . . Some had undoubtedly been exposed to mental depression or excitement, or they were in a low state of health. Some 4 of the 15 left were ill before labour . . . Some were of traumatic origin, not toxaemic . . . Now where is the proof of the existence of a separate entity such as ordinarily understood by puerperal fever ? . . . The specific symptoms of zymotic disease were of all grades of proportions in the several cases; and, generally speaking, the less the specific signs shewed themselves, the more tendency there was to malignancy. . . . ” Illustrations by some cases shewing credulity regarding scarlet fever—with the entire overlooking of an incubation stage. Usual argument about women in childbed recovering from scarlatina—“Even so; but this is no proof that the influence of scarlatina is not detrimental” . . . Violent mental emotions are also followed by symptoms precisely similar to those that follow zymotic influence ... In some cases, no doubt, some other medium must be added, such as decomposing “sepsis, ” or the living bacteria . . . That decomposing matter does cause these symptoms can readily be proved . . . One thing seems to militate against the notion that it is the bacteria which accompany the absorption of offensive discharges which produce the symptoms, namely, that if you wash out the uterus the symptoms very rapidly subside ... if living growths were going on, one could scarcely expect so rapid a subsidence . . . “No practical treatment can be founded on knowledge of bacteria” ... I Such is the liability of the puerperal women to these
