Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
DENHAM 243 One of these was Michaelis of Kiel, and the other is Geh Hofrath Professor Dr. Lange of Heidelberg.” Denham. To this period belongs the article by Dr. Denham,1 Master of the Rotunda Hospital of Dublin; it is the only British contribution worthy of mention, because of the writer’s official position; but it is not one of which British Obstetrics need be specially proud. Denham had recently visited Paris, Munich and Vienna, and he appears to have been rather flattered by the attention which he had received from Carl Braun. He would, of course, imbibe from Braun all the anti-Semmelweis prejudices, and Denham readily and credulously received them without criticism, as did in fact with few exceptions similar visitors from the United Kingdom to Vienna for many years afterwards. Denham began his article with a destructive criticism of all that was most advanced and scientifically true in British teaching concerning puerperal fever at that time. After a short summary of the Semmelweis Doctrine, Denham turns his attention to the opinions of Copland.2 He had declared that no practitioner ought to be any longer ignorant of the completely established doctrine that this most deadly of our domestic pestilences is conveyed from the infected to the healthy, chiefly and most frequently by the accoucheur. Dr. Denham then calls to task Professor Simpson of Edinburgh who “holds strongly the infectious character of the disease, and, I regret to add, makes the doctor bear the sin and disgrace of spreading the disease to a large extent.” From this disconcerting doctrine, which was just that of Semmelweis, Denham turns for comfort to Dr. Meigs, of Philadelphia, the most notorious obscurantist of his generation, and quotes him with obvious sympathy. Meigs had declared, “Still, I certainly never was the medium of its transmission.” No conviction of sin and disgrace about Meigs ! 1. On the recent Epidemic of Puerperal Fever in Dublin. Dublin Quarterly Journal of Med. Science, Nov., 1862. 2 Dictionary of Practical Medicine, 1844—1858.
