Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
V. Life in Buda-Pesth
158 CARL BRAUN English lyingin hospitals are ‘ self-contained ’ institutions and frequently referred to the circumstance ...” The vicinity of localities which are full of animal material, such as dead-houses, great outflows of sewage, unclean privies, defectively drained, putting the placenta in the privy : all these things assist in the spread of epidemics.. . . . The defective construction of lying-in hospitals with insufficient ventilation. . . . The exhalations from foul excrement . . . the puerperal odour (Puerperalgeruch), the failure to isolate the sick from the normal . . . the continuous use of all the wards of a lying-in hospital . . . uninterrupted teaching of midwifery in crowded lying-in hospitals . . . the admission of patients suffering from zymotic diseases into the labour- rooms. . . .” All news in Vienna : all brought from England by Arneth. Semmelweis devotes the last article of the Opinions to Carl Braun’s publications of 1855 and 1857 (Lehrbuch der Geburtshilfe), and he appears to linger over the points of his attack with a consciousness of power to annihilate his arrogant rival. ‘‘Carl Braun, my successor as assistant and now professor of midwifery at the First Obstetric Clinic of Vienna .... where I discovered the for ever true etiology of puerperal fever, is an opponent of the true etiology of puerperal fever, and owing to the influence he might exercise I am compelled to go more fundamentally into the subject than with some earlier opponents, but Carl Braun himself makes the task easy. ‘‘Carl Braun’s opposition to the true etiology of puerperal fever arises not from a conviction that my etiology is not true : his opposition is based partly on his own ignorance and partly on illwill towards myself.” Long quotations are given from Carl Braun’s writings to prove that whatever he may say openly about Semmelweis and his doctrine he has practically adopted the prophylaxis entire in his hospital work . . . ‘‘Yet he has, contrary to his convictions, not only written against my ‘Lehre,’ but he is in the habit of lecturing to his
