Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
192 SILBERSCHMIDT there were men then at work in the same city of Paris who were beginning to solve the enigma. Pasteur was thinking and working : he had begun to publish his earliest results, but the proclamation of his matured and specially relevant opinions was to come in a few years, and the fruits were to be gathered in time. Pinard says : I do not forget the words of Lister who said in his opening address in 1869 : “ The germ theory is the polar star which ought to guide us safely in a navigation which, but for it, would be desperately difficult.” In Pinard’s article, repeatedly quoted, there is a remarkably interesting and impressive table showing the results of Tarnier’s methods during four successive periods up to the present time. The only explanation required to those who do not know medical Paris is that the Maternité, the school for midwives, and the Clinique Baudelocque, for students of medicine, are one great lying-in hospital within the same enclosure, and that the Clinique Baudelocque is a comparatively recent foundation. PERIODS. MORTALITY. I. 2. 3. 4Period of inaction (.856-69)--9-3i%lMaternité- Period of isolation (1870-80) ...2'32%J Period of antisepsis (1889-98)...o'67% I £.. . T^o-n rvrl onficancic o n H QQPHQIQ L ^ Period of antisepsis and asepsis r (1899-08) ................................o’29%] Baudelocque. Tarnier’s great work, which is entitled to rank near the JEtiologie of Semmelweis, was De l’asepsie et de l’antisepsie en Obstétrique. But with him puerperal fever never engrossed all his thoughts and sympathies, and as is generally known he performed other great and original service to Obstetrics. Silberschmidt. Towards the end of 1859 when Semmelweis was well advanced in the preparation of Die sEtiologie, and was probably actually engaged upon the controversies of
