Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VII. Last Illness and Death
OBSTETRICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON 301 all this arise under perfect sanitary conditions, spontaneously, or from mere chemical decomposition, or only when some poisonous agent is introduced from without, the seed of some plant sown in a fruitful soil ? . . . What relations do this fever and the local lesions bear to one another ? . . . What relation have bacteria and allied organic forms to the pyaemic process in the puerperal state ? What is the value of antiseptics in the prevention and treatment of puerperal fever?” The speaker then gave a summary of the contents of a paper of his own, published in 1864, discussing the researches of Pasteur on fermentation, on the organised corpuscles in the air, on spontaneous generation, and on putrefaction. He had also shewn from the observations of Angus Smith and others, that germs may often be found in the air of crowded rooms and hospital-wards, which only require favourable conditions for their rapid development. . . . It is easy to understand that some germs find their most appropriate nutriment in the secretions from wounds, or in pus, and that they so modify it as to convert it into a poison when absorbed ... or they may enter the blood, effecting in the process deadly changes in the circulating fluid. Reference was next made to the recent researches on bacteria by Davaine, which received too little attention in this country . . . . . . Lister’s work was begun at the Glasgow Infirmary in 1866 : he used carbolic acid for the express purpose of destroying the organic germs in the air, or in any of the liquids about the patient, or, of protecting any wounded or injured part . . . the results are too well known to require more than the most passing allusion to the prevention of surgical fever, of pyaemia and septicaemia . . . and the general freedom of hospital-wards from noxious odours and matters, and from the introduction of poison from the dead-house or dissecting-room . . . If traumatic fever and pyaemia can be kept out of a surgical hospital why should not puerperal fever be kept out of a lying-in hospital . . . ? There has been a great
