Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
I. Introduction
2 SEMMELWEIS immediate blessings to the human race by the saving of life and the prevention of suffering. These were the discoveries of Edward Jenner and Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis. In neither case did the discovery fall from Heaven; in neither was there a grasping of Promethean fire; about neither can we speak of inspiration. The discovery of Semmelweis was possible only for a man who had undergone prolonged and laborious preparation, who had directly observed, and had reflected without preconceptions, whose intellect was kept alert and keen because of the warmth of his human sympathy. The heart of Semmelweis was wrung by witnessing around him the suffering and death of thousands of the miserable victims of some baleful agent, which had eluded the efforts of generations of investigators to comprehend it. “Consider,” says Carlyle, “how the beginning of all Thought worth the name is Love: and the wise head never yet was, without first the generous heart.” Many men in all generations have looked into Nature with their natural vision undimmed by the teaching of pedants: many men have been endowed with clear intellects and hearts full of love for their fellow men, with the enthusiasm of humanity, and they have been enabled to achieve some signal service for the human race in their day and generation; but in the whole history of medicine there is only one Semmelweis in the magnitude of his services to Mankind, and in the depth of his sufferings from contemporary jealous stupidity and ingratitude. The record of the steps which led up to the establishment of the “eternally true” etiology of puerperal fever is not only of engrossing interest as history, but it must remain of perennial value as an example of the application of logical method in working from the known to the unknown in Medicine. We trace the emancipation from the blinding tyranny of traditional doctrine, and then observe the positive stride from the known to the unknown which marks the final discovery as nearly unique
