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)
"There was I believe a natural sequel to denial in the form of meticulous hygiene. I doubt that chance alone would have given the skeptics Collins and Trait as the outstanding examples of cleanliness coupled with successful control of infection". From the exactly documented history of the first obstetrical clinic in Vienna, we noticed that the number of P.F. cases increased after Semmelweis had left the clinic and the skeptic Prof. Klein's assistant Braun (later professor) was in charge of the clinic. [29] Klein and he still professed that they continued the Semmelweis' routine but probably half heartedly because they did not believe in it. Such assumption seems to me more logical than Wister Meigs assumption that skeptics were more careful in hygienic measures than people who feared contagion. Before enacting the successful antiseptic routine in the Rotunda Hospital in Feb. 1829 Collins had sought the advice of the trustees and experienced colleagues. Dr. Collins describes his reasoning and his antiseptic procedures quite well. His views and practical actions were influenced by the dominant contagion theory. It seems to me that the treatment of the statistics by J. Wister Meigs is idiosyncratic namely biased. Why e.g. does he call Collins a skeptic? Collins said literally [7a]: "The facts here detailed are strongly calculated, not only to lead us to suspect, but even to prove, that this fever derived its origin from some local cause, and not from anything noxious in the atmosphere . . ." Thus Collins rejected the unfounded hypothesis of the atmosphericcosmic-telluric influences. The statistics of J. Wister Meigs would give a different result if Collins were counted (as he should be) as a contagionist. Politically and socially the climate was quite different in Holmes' Boston than in Semmelweis' Vienna. The young country of America was expanding, optimistic, selfreliant and industrious while Austria and especially Vienna was at that time in a depressed mood with high tension which erupted into revolution in 1848. In this uprising the students of the Viennese University and the liberal citizenry played the leading role. The revolution was at first successful. The servitude of the peasants was abolished and the reactionary chancellor Prince K. von Metternich was forced to resign. Many Viennese believed that a new era of freedom had come. These hopes were bloodily crushed by military power and an absolutistic reactionary regime was re-established. The personal drama of Semmelweis had to be seen with this background. In addition, Erna Lesky P8] had convincingly pointed out that Semmelweis and his opponents were pawns in a power struggle between exponents of new scientific methods and academic freedom represented by Joseph Skoda, Ferdinand v. Hebra and Karl v. Rokitansky on the one side and the old rigid methods of training and teaching represented by Johann Klein, Anton v. Rosas and the Imperial administration of the University on the other. Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis (1818-1865) [8, 18, 19] was born in the city of Buda (Ofen) which was, at that time a partly German speaking enclave in Hungary but became later united with Pest (on the other side of the Danube) to form the TwinCapital-City Budapest. He began to study law at the University of Vienna but switched to medicine like Holmes had done. During his studies he was especially impressed by the logical scientific research approach of Rokitansky (Pathology), Skoda (Internal Medicine) and Hebra (founder of the new science of Dermatology). The friendship of
