Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
144 BEFORE DIE iETIOLOGIE the original sources, many professors and others joined in the attacks upon Semmelweis without even clearly understanding what had been taught and consequently what they were denouncing! Misrepresentation had got a start and we shall find that it was never overtaken and annihilated even by the publication oiDie JEtiologie. One of the cheering incidents was the publication in the Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science of August, 1857, °f Dr. Edward W. Murphy’s article entitled: “What is Puerperal Fever?” But this was only a break in the almost universal antagonism by the most prominent teachers in Germany. In 1857 appeared an account of a puerperal fever outbreak in the new Lying-in Hospital of Munich, from which it was evident that Professor Anselm Martin had learned nothing from Semmelweis. Veit, of Rostock, wrote against the doctrine in the same year, and Späth of the Second Clinic and Carl Braun, the successor of Professor Klein of Vienna, joined the chorus in opposition. Carl Braun, in the course of his unscrupulous attack, of which we shall hear more in the sequel, actually committed himself to the statement: “In Germany, France and England this hypothesis of cadaveric infection has been up to the most recent time almost unanimously rejected.” Untruthful, spiteful, intended X to wound, was the language of Carl Braun, but it had a wonderful satisfactory result: Semmelweis at last yielded to the entreaties of his friends, and resolved to begin the task for which he had hitherto declared himself unfit. Although Semmelweis had been sadly negligent of his duty in leaving the field of controversy for the last seven years to such antagonists as Scanzoni and Carl Braun, a certain amount of publicity had been given to the Lehre by the Vienna medical press, and the subject of puerperal fever was receiving more attention and discussion than ever before in Europe. Still there was going on the same wanton sacrifice of human life and the same infliction of miserable physical disabilities, owing to the general adherence of professors of mid
