Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
III. Life in Vienna
THE DISCOVERY 5i that is equal to a mortality of 3 per cent., whereas in the year 1846 before the introduction of chlorine disinfection out of 4,010 lying-in women in the First Division 459 died, that is a mortality of 11*4 per cent. In the Second Division in the year 1846 out of 3,754 patients 105 died, that is equal to 27 per cent. In the year 1848 during the whole of which chlorine disinfection was diligently practised, 45 patients out of 3,556 died in the First Division, equal to a mortality of i‘27 per cent., and in the Second Division 43 patients out of 3,219 died, that is a mortality of 173 per cent. So for the first time in the history of the Vienna Lying-in Hospital the mortality in the First Division fell below that of the Second Division. In this year, 1848, there were two months, March and August, in which not one single death occurred among the patients of the First Division. The experience of every month went to support the belief that puerperal fever was nothing more or less than cadaveric blood-poisoning. A review of the history of the hospital, and its division into two Clinics, of the comparative practices of the two divisions and of the various teachers, and of the methods of instruction, all appeared to justify the conviction that the hitherto unknown endemic cause of the frightful devastation which puerperal fever had wrought in the First Clinic had at last been discovered; it was simply the cadaveric material adhering to the examining hands in the First Clinic. That the cause was cadaveric poison and that alone was further demonstrated by this fact, that with the exception of the introduction of chlorine disinfection no other change whatever had been made in the conditions prevailing in the First Clinic. The cause had been removed, the effect, that is the puerperal mortality, had disappeared. The striking difference in the mortality in the two divisions was now also explained. The system of instruction for midwives was such that neither teachers nor pupils had so frequently occasion to manipulate the
