Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 81. (Budapest, 1977)
TANULMÁNYOK - Ehrentheil, O. F.: Oliver Wendell Holmes és Semmelweis Jgnác egy és negyed századról visszatekintve (angol nyelven)
old wisdom and knowledge and not to do research or find new ways of treatment. Sinclair, who wrote his book about Semmelweis before 1909 had not yet seen the signal works of female researchers in physics, chemistry, and medicine in the 20th century. Thus Sinclair's conclusions have to be modified by saying that he may have been correct but only during an era of unequal and lower status of women. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809—1899) [9] combined a splendid scientific mind and a literary ability to express himself in poetry and prose. Born into a family of high intellectual ability and aspiration he inscribed at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts U.S.A. At first he studied law but soon changed to medicine. While still a young law student he became famous for his poem "Old Ironside" which helped to prevent the USA government from scraping the frigate "Constitution" so that we are even today able to visit this oldest wooden battleship of the U.S.A. Navy. As a young medical doctor he demonstrated ability to summarize and clarify medical issues and won several Boylston prizes in scientific competitions. He wrote about "Intermittent Fevers in New England", "Neuralgia", and the "Importance of Direct Exploration in Medical Practice" in 1836 and 1837 [10], and "Homeopathy and its Kindred Delusions" in 1842 [11]. During these years when his general practice was not going very well he attended the morning rounds at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Mass. USA. His sensitive mind may have been impressed by the dying of young people of surgical sepsis and puerperal fever. He was definitely not a "specialist" in our sense of the word and he was not an obstetrician. In December 1843 the following happened (I quote literally from his pamphlet in 1855) [2]: It happened some years ago, that a discussion arose in a Medical Society, of which I was a member, involving the subject of a certain supposed cause of disease, about which something was known, a good deal suspected, and not a little feared . The discussion was suggested by a case, reported at the preceding meeting, of a physician who made an examination of the body of a patient who had died with puerperal fever, and who himself died in less than a week, apparently in consequence of a wound received at the examination, having attended several women in confinement in the meantime, all of whom, as it was alleged, were attacked with puerperal fever. Thus the evidence collected pointed to contagion: a responsibility laid on the doctors themselves for the fatal outbreak of P.F. The following is a quote from the booklet about Holmes by Miriam R. Small: [9b]* On January 23, 1843 Dr. John Jackson requested that the society continue to investigate the probability of physicians communicating the fever from one patient to another. The next three weeks must have been busy ones for Holmes as he traced the history of the disease through records published here and abroad and made inquiries among individual doctors. On February 13, 1843 he presented before the society an answer that was acclaimed a hundred years later as, at that time it was delivered, "the most important contribution made in America to the * Copyright 1962 by Twayne Publishers, Inc. and reprinted with permission of Twayne Publishers, a Division of. G. K. Hall & Co., Boston.
