Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
250 OPEN LETTERS not occurred as the result of infection from without, because your students have not made examinations. For so devoid of conscience as I consider you, Herr Hofrath, still you do not assert that all these labours were conducted to a conclusion without any examination whatever; probably you yourself, or your assistant, examine the women in labour to determine whether the case is normal or abnormal. It is all the more probable that during this pseudo-epidemic examinations were made . . . You have forgotten that two of your wards are reserved for gynaecological cases : in a gynaecological division there are often patients whose diseases produce a decomposed matter, and it is not necessary that students make examinations in order to produce a pseudoepidemic; it suffices if the Herr Hofrath and his assistant make examinations in the gynaecological department and also in the labour-room . . . ... I believe much more that the midwives who examine parturient women in your hospital . . . and know as little as you do, Herr Hofrath, how puerperal fever can be prevented, when these midwives came into contact with patients who produce a decomposed material they convey infection to the healthy. “My Doctrine is based among other circumstances upon my experience from May 1847 till now, the 25th of June, 1861, in three different institutions which were in former times annually ravaged with frightful pseudoepidemics of puerperal fever . . . “Your teaching, Herr Hofrath, is based on the dead bodies of lying-in women slaughtered through ignorance; and because I have formed the unshakable resolution to put an end to this murderous work as far as lies in my power so to do, I put to you the following questions . . . If, however, Herr Hofrath, without having discussed my Doctrine as an opponent, you go on to write ... in support of the doctrine of epidemic puerperal fever, to teach your students the doctrine of epidemic puerperal fever, I denounce you before God and the world as a murderer, and the History of Puerperal Fever will not
