Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
III. Life in Vienna
ELIMINATION OF FACTORS 37 it had a strange effect upon my nerves when I heard the bell hurried past my door; a sigh would escape my heart for the victim that once more was claimed by an unknown power. This bell was a painful exhortation to me to search for this unknown cause with all my might. Even to this difference between the arrangements of the two Divisions was attributed the higher mortality of the First Division.” “During my first term of office I appealed to the sense of humanity of the servant of God, and without difficulty it was arranged that for the future the priests would take a roundabout route, without ringing the bell, so as to reach the sick chamber in silence and unobserved. The two Divisions were made similar in this respect, but the difference in their mortality still remained.” It was alleged that the reason for the great mortality was because patients were unmarried women of the most hopeless class of the community, accustomed to earn their bread in want and misery, and amidst conditions which produced great and constant depression of spirits. If this had been the cause of the mortality it would have been as great in the Second Division, for to it exactly the same class of patients were admitted. It was alleged that in the First Division the medical students examined the women in a coarser and rougher way than was the practice in the School for Midwives. But what is the introduction of the index finger into the wide and long vagina of a pregnant woman, ^s a cause of injury, compared with the process of parturition ? If examination could produce a fatal injury it would be inconceivable that the passage of the body of the foetus through the genital tract could be otherwise than fatal in its consequences. The higher mortality of the First Division was ascribed to the wounded modesty of the poor women going through the process of parturition in the presence of men. Most of the patients in the First Division certainly suffered from fear, but not many were troubled with a sense of shame. Besides, it is impossible to
