Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
III. Life in Vienna
54 EXPLANATION OF PHENOMENA presenting any similar conditions were isolated, and similar misfortunes were prevented. We have here, for the first time, stated the theory of Semmelweis concerning infection by the atmosphere, and we find it frequently repeated and restated in the AEtiologie. Later in the history of puerperal fever we shall see authorities like Veit and v. Winckel and their early contemporaries, beginning to call in question the importance of the atmosphere as a factor in the production of puerperal fever. In this particular case of caries it is not difficult to imagine the shocking neglect, and the indifference to cleanliness, which permitted the nursing staff so to dress the sores as to cause the labour-room to be filled with a stench. The same carelessness would no doubt leave the dressings of the knee in such a state as to contaminate accidentally the hand employed to explore the genitals. In explanation of this indifference it should be always kept in mind that the whole lying-in hospital was constantly pervaded with offensive odours to which all were accustomed. There was the puerperal odour (.Puerperalgeruch) and the smell of the Abort or closet, only one to a whole Division. We shall find later Arneth, who was the colleague of Semmelweis in the Second Division, exclaiming in admiration at the absence of evil smells in the London and Dublin lying-in hospitals. The Discovery of the Causation of Puerperal Fever was now complete: the three sources of infection to which we shall have so many references throughout the JEtiologie and the Briefe were established facts in the mind of Semmelweis. Instead of the doubts and questionings of 1846, when all was uncertainty except the appalling number of the dead, to the mind constantly filled with the subject everything became clear, and events and phenomena took their places in an orderly system in establishing the truth of the Doctrine. Explanation of Phenomena as Evidence. Events in the history of the Lying-in Hospital, unintelligible hitherto, now poured forth evidence. The Lying-in Hospital was opened in August 1784, and Boer
