Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
ETIOLOGY 221 and the results obtained by general practitioners, with this paragraph (v. Arneth, p. 334): “■ Puerperal fever is such a frightful malady that it must interest us in the highest degree to learn what the English medical practitioners think of it, generally speaking, and especially what is the generally accepted opinion about that enigmatical subject, the etiology, and also their opinion about what is the best treatment for the disease.” Following Arneth for facts, and interpolating opinions of his own, Semmelweis tells the story of the accumulation of evidence by English practitioners which appeared to them to establish the theory of the contagious nature of puerperal fever. We follow in his pages the stories of Róberton, of Manchester, of the inquiry of Storrs among his neighbours, and his conclusions from the evidence brought to his knowledge, and the experience more or less important of Reedal, of Sheffield, Sleight, of Hull, and all the others whose contributions are familiar to the English reader of the history of midwifery. All of these may be more readily referred to in English medical literature. Semmelweis brings out with disconcerting clearness the curious English theory of the relationship between puerperal fever and scarlatina and erysipelas and all the zymotic diseases, a confusion which in England, on the authority mainly of Barnes, remained more or less prevalent to nearly the end of the century. On this subject he states, then, what is the universal opinion now: ‘‘Puerperal fever stands to erysipelas and its sequelae in no other relation than to any other disease which produces a decomposed material. . . . When English medical men recognise only puerperal fever and erysipelas as the sources of the decomposed material which produces puerperal fever, they draw the boundaries much too narrow .... puerperal fever is the same disease as that of which surgeons and anatomists and patients who have undergone surgical operations may be the victims . . .
