Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 55-56. (Budapest, 1970)

TANULMÁNYOK - Mádai Lajos: Semmelweis és a statisztikai tudomány (angol nyelvű közlemény)

Many of the contemporaries of Semmelweis regarded puerperal fever to be an epidemic, owing to its seasonal fluctuations. According to prevailing medical opinion — represented for example by Virchow — puerperal fever and subsequent mortality was the highest in winter and the lowest in the summer months. Consequently they tried to establish a direct relation between the cause of the illness and the effect of the seasons. Semmelweis refuted the hypothesis by a special grouping method: he arranged the data of the identical months of eight years (all months) in the order of their mortality rates. By contrasting the extreme values, the highest and lowest mortality rates, and by the great variability in the middle values of the time-sequences (in modern terminology the high diffusion of the sets) he proved that the seasons, the climatic factors could not produce puerperal fever. By way of illustration we print here the time-sequences of one winter (January) and one summer (July) month from the original table. M7 ms In his aetiological analysis Semmelweis on the basis of undebatable facts expounded that the more favourable mortality rate of the summer was due to the vacation, while the higher figures of the winter months could be explained by the higher number of pathologico-anatomical exercises and the subsequent contact infections. Diagram 2 gives a dynamic picture of the events surrounding the discovery of the pathogenesis of puerperal fever and its prophylaxis. The mortality rate, which was extremely high in the first ten months of 1846 (14.9 per cent), fell rapidly in the winter months (November 1840— February 1847). The decrease