Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
CARL BRAUN 157 the relief thereby obtained from conceding any merit to Semmelweis for his Lehre. The first attack upon Semmelweis emanating from Vienna was contained in a work entitled “ Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology,” by Chiari, Braun and Späth, published in 1855. The theoretical portion was the work of Carl Braun. Of thirty causes of puerperal fever discussed the twenty-eighth is “ cadaveric infection.” It could serve no good modern purpose to criticise in detail Braun’s largely antiquated theories on the alleged causes, such, for example, as the first, “pregnancy itself!” It must suffice to summarize what Semmelweis had to say on the subject in the AZtiologie under Opinions. For Braun puerperal fever is still a “zymotic disease of acute character, which can be produced in individuals with a marked predisposition, by means of general injurious influences such as emotional disturbances .... but as a rule by special influences, miasma, contagion, decomposed animal matter .... by which the peculiar foreign influence works as a ferment, and by contact sets the blood-mass in fermentation.” Among statements made by Carl Braun in this first attack, upon which Semmelweis makes little comment, are the following : “ We cannot therefore support to the full extent the thesis brought forward in support of cadaveric infection on the ground of observations made in the Vienna Lying-in Hospital. We cannot lay the blame on manipulations of the cadaver as an important cause of puerperal fever epidemics ; we would, however, consider it an act of the greatest presumption to permit or to practise examinations or perform operations on the puerperae with hands which retained a cadaveric odour after even the most diligent washing. . . . The position of lying-in hospitals shows in the state of health of the patients the mightiest influence. Lying-in hospitals should be separate entirely from general hospitals.” Clearly from Arneth, who was much impressed with the fact that
