Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
IV. Spread of the Doctrine During the Vienna Period
74 SIMPSON, OF EDINBURGH einer Uebereilung) missed the point of Arneth’s communication, in considering the opinion of Semmelweis on the cause of puerperal fever as identical with that of the medical profession in England. Perhaps no incident in Simpson’s life so clearly brings out the fair-mindedness of the man and his conscientiousness in seeking scientific truth without regard to mere personal considerations. As soon as he received a clear exposition of the Semmelweis doctrine from Arneth, who visited Edinburgh in the year 1851, he seized the point of difference, and frankly acknowledged his mistake and tried to make reparation. But after all Simpson’s reproaches did not amount to Schmähungen. He merely stated what was true, somewhat abruptly perhaps. The lying-in hospitals of Austria, Germany and France were at that time atrociously neglected compared with those in England; and nowhere in Europe except Holland and Scandinavia had the staffs the slightest notion of the value of cleanliness. When Arneth visited the London lying- in hospitals, what appeared to impress him most was this cleanliness and the absence of offensive odour in the wards ! Simpson was mistaken concerning the identity of the Semmelweis doctrine with the English theory of contagion, but there can be no doubt that it was the preparation of a mental receptivity and capacity for appreciation which the doctrine of contagiosity, prevalent in the United Kingdom provided, that made the Semmelweis doctrine receive such a prompt and cordial welcome in London, Dublin and Edinburgh, much to the honour of our leading obstetricians of the time. We shall have to deplore a retrograde movement in England under French influence a generation later, but since the time of Simpson there has always been, especially in Scotland, a strong phalanx of advanced opinion which has been proved in time to have been founded on the truth, as it is now universally recognised and accepted.
