Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
IV. Spread of the Doctrine During the Vienna Period
70 THE REVOLUTION of the serious consequences of the revolution upon the whole subsequent career of Semmelweis, we note with astonishment an almost universal silence on the subject among his biographers^ Carlyle, writing about the Revolution of 1848, says : “Closely following the outbreak in Paris all Europe exploded, boundless, uncontrollable, and we had the year 1848 one of the most singular, disastrous, amazing and on the whole humiliating, years the European world ever saw. . . . The kings all made haste to go. . . . Not one of them turned round and stood upon his kingship as upon a right he could afford to die for. . . . Such was the history from Baltic to Mediterranean, in Italy, France, Prussia, Austria, from end to end of Europe in those March days of 1848. . . . “And so in city after city street-barricades are piled, and truculent more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises; king after king capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before. . . . “The kind of persons who excite or give signal in such revolutions—students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes—acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame.” Such states of agitation and excitement cannot last for long, but in Vienna, where the explosion occurred in March, the unrest continued for much longer than in the western and northern parts of Europe, largely owing to Race complications. Early in March the Diet of Lower Austria had addressed a petition to the Emperor Ferdinand asking for certain reforms. On the advice of Metternich, the real autocrat, the petition was rejected, and at once the troubles began. There was a rising of students who broke into the Chamber and sacked it, and they then came into collision with the soldiers; forthwith the bloodshed began. It was immediately after these incidents
