Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 62-63. (Budapest, 1971)

TANULMÁNYOK - Meigs, J. Wister: Kontagionisták, antikontagionisták és a gyermekágyi láz (angol nyelven)

readers. The mysterious feature was Holmes's attack on Philadelphians in general and Meigs in particular. It was a puzzle because it was without substantial foundation and it included comments ranging from inaccuracy to innuendo and slander. The biases against Philadelphians can be illustrated in tabular form and are statistically significant. Table 2 summarizes the alleged views on contagion •of all physicians referred to in Holmes's essay by name, title or, in a few cases, merely by occupation as physicians. When these views were considered in relation to country or place of practice, it was clear that Philadelphia had a statistical preponderance of anticontagionist physicians. This contrasted strikingly with alleged opinions of other physicians, particularly in New England and other parts of the United States. The author could have achieved this result by selecting appropriate witnesses from different parts of the country. The extent of such selection is unknown, however, the apparent anticontagionism of Philadelphia physicians turns out to be an artifact for another reason. Holmes misrepresented the views of several Philadelphia and other U. S. physicians and when they were reclassified, there was no longer a statistical difference. Table 3 summarizes from Holmes's essay the 04 complete references to texts and journals by geographical source and method of citation. These 04 citations were complete enough to be sure of the source and there was a predominant pattern for 48 of them. For textbooks this included the author's name in Holmes's text with the title and page in a footnote. For journals, the standard pattern was to include the author's name in Holmes's text and the title and date in a footnote. As the table shows, a significant excess of citations from Philadelphia sources were atypical. There were 39 additional references not complete enough for precise bibliographical research. Fifteen of these were found in Meigs's anthology. In several cases, the anthology appeared to be the only place Holmes could have found the reference. This is a part of the evidence that Holmes used Meigs's 1842 anthology as the main foundation for his extensive references and probably took his longest quotations directly from it. More than that, Holmes seems to have played an elaborate game of hide and seek. He failed to acknowledge Meigs's publication, which had had extensive reviews in two of the journals Holmes used [22a, 22b], but insTable 3, COMPLETE REFERENCES TO TEXTS AND JOURNALS BY GEOGRAPHICAL SOURCE AND METHODS OF CITATION ethod of . itation Geographical Source Philadelphia Not Philadelphia All Standard 3 45 48 Atypical 6 10 16 All 9 55 64 X

2 corrected 7.28 p<-01