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

VI. Publication or "Die Aetiologie"

AS GYNECOLOGIST

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for six years conducted the gynaecological division of a hospital, and during the five years since I became professor, I have admitted all cases diagnosed as uterine polypus; I have had in private practice frequent opportunity of operating on cases of uterine polypus, . . . and I have not to regret a single death from the operation, I have not even seen a patient seriously ill, and I

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attribute my favourable results simply to the fact that I operate with clean hands.” (p. 428.)

Bruck says : “As a gynaecologist Semmelweis was an entirely self-made man.” His position as Assistant in Vienna left him no time to devote to the gynaecological Clinic, but as we have seen he worked hard for years at the pathological anatomy of the subject, as only very few obstetricians had ever done. He had examined at the autopsy so many women, who had died from diseases peculiar to their sex, that he had perfectly acquired the educated touch. He could rely on it almost alone for diagnosis. The thoroughness of this preliminary training was such that his progress in clinical observation and even in gynaecological surgery was extremely rapid.

Singular light is thrown on the state of gynaecology in Hungary by the fact that Semmelweis was the first to perform ovariotomy in that country : this was in June, 1863.

There can be little doubt that it was Markusovszky who inspired the enterprising incident. At that time the operations of Charles Clay, of Manchester, Baker Brown and Spencer Wells, of London, and Thomas Keith, of Edinburgh, had attracted the attention of all the culture lands of Europe and America, and drew streams of medical visitors to witness them. Among these visitors was Markusovszky of Buda-Pesth, who came back with glowing accounts of what he had seen and heard. Semmelweis appears to have performed this first ovariotomy according to the method described to him by his friend, finishing a very unfavourable case with the external clamp on the pedicle, as was the method employed in those days even by some of the