Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
VII. Last Illness and Death
302 OBSTETRICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON outcry against lying-in hospitals of late; but I trust this Society may be able to guide the feeling rather in the direction of freeing them from puerperal fever than of destroying them . . . Strict enforcement of the same laws of sanitary science, which has reduced the mortality after ovariotomy, should be “your rule and guide in your daily practice.” After the conclusion of the opening address, a letter from Dr. J. Matthews Duncan was read, in which, among other things he said: “I have always practised ... on the footing that care of the hands and clothes is a sufficient precaution for the safety of my patients. I have no belief whatever in any special virtue in going away . . .” Dr. Leishman, professor of midwifery in the University of Glasgow, regretted that he had disseminated views which he now believed to be erroneous. He regretted that he had not more thoroughly investigated the evidence of the pyaemic source of puerperal fever. He believed there was strong evidence in favour of pyaemic or septicaemic origin, but he was not prepared to go the length which many writers in Germany, and some in this country, had gone in accepting the pyaemic theory as the solution of all our difficulties. His own difficulties arose from the class of cases connected with or produced by a specific poison such as scarlatina; and there was another class in which the original symptoms were more those of a local inflammation, be it metritis or peritonitis, localised or general. As far as the final symptoms are concerned there is a difficulty in separating this class of case from those cases in which the puerperal fever was dependent on pyaemia or septicaemia . . . We have frequently been informed that these diseases are likely to be engendered by decomposing animal matters from whatever source the decomposition may originally arise . . . Objections were taken by the speaker to the Semmelweis doctrine as not sufficient, and the work of the late Sir James Simpson and Professor Lister were drawn upon for supporting evidence . . . “This identity of pyaemia •or septicaemia with puerperal fever may be established
