Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)

VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"

SPREAD OF THE DOCTRINE

229

but they have all accorded with the fundamental principle.

We have in a former chapter given some account of the chaotic doctrine of the etiology of puerperal fever before Semmelweis came upon the scene. Now in spite of the overwhelming evidence in support of the simple doctrine of the consequences of contact with decomposed animal organic matter, and the preventive influence of a small piece of a common chemical substance, we shall find that cosmos was not to be so easily created out of this chaos.

The new idea had to be assimilated by the professional mind throughout Christendom, and the process was disappointingly slow; in many quarters the organs of assimilation revolted against the task.

SPREAD OF THE DOCTRINE AFTER PUBLICATION OF DIE ÄTIOLOGIE.

We have traced the reception given to the Doctrine since its first proclamation in Vienna in 1847 until the publication of Die JEtiologie in i860, and we must now proceed to observe the progress made by the Lehre throughout Europe during the life of Semmelweis and in the generation immediately following the publication. But the distinction of before and after publication is largely arbitrary. Since the first announcement by Hebra in 1847 in a not unimportant medical journal, the published report by Haller, the reception and publication in London and Edinburgh and Dublin, it was a discreditable thing for any official teacher of midwifery in Europe to remain ignorant of the new doctrine. But accepting the painful historic facts, we must recall the chief incidents in the spread of the Doctrine after the publication.

Among the first of his duties after publication Semmelweis considered it to be the presentation of copies of his work to certain medical societies and to personal friends. To the United Kingdom were despatched