Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
i82 PARIS ACADEMY history of puerperal fever epidemics in Paris and how in 1855-56 the mortality rose to such a height and assumed such a malignant form that Dubois was compelled to close the hospital. He concluded that puerperal fever is a specific disease, but it does not attack lying-in women only. It may attack non-puerperal and even non-pregnant women : it may attack the foetus, the new-born infant, and even men wounded in any way. Paul Dubois intervened in the discussion on the 30th of March. This intervention, he said, was imposed upon him more by his professional position rather than by his ability to shed light upon an obscure and difficult problem. . . . The pathological condition which was under discussion presented itself under two principal forms : the bilious and the inflammatory, the latter form including peritonitis, metro-peritonitis, ovaritis. ... It was not impossible that the diseases with these local affections are produced under epidemic influence. . . . “ I admit the primitive alteration of the blood by a cause as yet unknown because this hypothesis appears to me permissible and because after the ruin of the other theories it is the only one which I am able to accept.” The rest of this first address contains a series of pretentious generalities without weight. . . Trousseau’s opinion is not new : it is ten years since Simpson of Edinburgh published an important article in which he tried to prove an analogy between a woman recently confined and a person who has just undergone an important operation. . . . After a further series of platitudes Dubois referred to the work of Semmelweis, but he had only heard of cadaveric infection, and the alleged results of disinfection after des recherches cadavériques, and he concluded with the dictum : “ This opinion is no longer supported in Germany.” Cruveilhier, Physician to the Maternité, was the first to say something valuable and modern in the first month’s debate. His opinions amount to the following : I. Puerperal fever is essentially a wound fever.\ 2. The
