Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
IV. Spread of the Doctrine During the Vienna Period
HEBRA’S FIRST ARTICLE 67 In publishing these experiences we invite the Directors of all lying-in institutions, some of whom Dr. Semmelweis has already made acquainted with these most important observations, to contribute the results of their investigations either to support or refute them.” There are some inaccuracies in this article which an obstetrician would not have introduced, but they are not important, and they go to prove that Hebra himself wrote the article without the inspiration and supervision of Semmelweis. This point is therefore brought clearly out at this time, December 1847, in a widely-read medical journal that: Puerperal fever is in most cases a cadaveric infectiont but it is sometimes an infection by means of putrid exudation or discharge from a living organism. We shall see in the prolonged and acrimonious controversy, which followed even the publication of Die sEtiologie, a damnable iteration of the statement that the Lehre of Semmelweis was narrow and one-sided. The constant reference to cadaveric poison, as by far the most important cause of puerperal fever, may surprise the English reader, and it requires a word of explanation. The practice of making post-mortem examinations was universal in Austria at that time and for long afterwards. From early in the nineteenth century all medical practitioners in Lower Austria were required by a ministerial order, which to them had the force of law, to make as many autopsies as they could, and to send interesting specimens to the General Hospital of Vienna for educational purposes. In private practice even it came to this : So many deaths, as many postmortem examinations and dissections. Medical practitioners hurried from these autopsies, after perfunctory hand-washing, to surgical operations and midwifery cases. It was required also that post-mortem examinations should be made upon the bodies of all patients who died in the hospitals. The professors and assistants performed these sections, and in the case of teachers of
