Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"
OPEN LETTERS 257 fessors of midwifery who have heartily adopted his opinions and acted upon them, and who have been honourable enough to publicly proclaim their convictions. “ It shews how little the medical world has as yet been influenced by my Lehre . . . When an epidemic of puerperal fever does not excite indignation against the official persons responsible for its production, but on the contrary the observations made during an epidemic of puerperal fever are published for the instruction of the medical world.” “This fact is for me an urgent demand to work energetically for the diffusion of the truth in order to bring to an end as soon as possible this shocking waste of human life.” Although this letter occupied ninety-two printed pages, it remained unfinished; it ends with “continuation and conclusion to follow.” It is easy to understand the bitter disappointment and vexation of Semmelweis as he contemplated the obstruction placed in the way of his teaching, but it was certainly time to bring his method of advocacy to an end. As Bruck says: If Semmelweis had perceived that the method which he had adopted would not bring success, that his letters only embittered the controversy, and did not obtain for him any new friends, or if he had ceased from all further attacks on his enemies at the urgent representations of the friends, who marked with regret the excitement rising day by day which this unsparing polemic produced in him, it is probable that he would have been more successful. In these years of bitterness when Semmelweis, misunderstood and neglected, carried on the fight with his opponents; when the whole medical press of Europe found scarcely a word of recognition for his services; in these years Markusovszky was the only friend who stood steadfast by his side, and when almost every one was beginning to doubt, never lost the courage in the endeavour to obtain recognition and adoption of the Lehre by his contemporaries. “The triumph of a good R
