Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 81. (Budapest, 1977)

TANULMÁNYOK - Ehrentheil, O. F.: Oliver Wendell Holmes és Semmelweis Jgnác egy és negyed századról visszatekintve (angol nyelven)

advancement of medicine". [12] This paper, "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever", was often passionately eloquent, but its statements were supported and its arguments logical. The doctors who heard it wanted it published, and it appeared in the issue for April 1843, of the magazine the society published for one year only : New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery. [9b] This speech and essay were summarized in an abstract in the American Journal of Medical Sciences for July 1843. It seems to me unjust and inconsistent with the facts when Sir William Sinclair [8b] tries to diminish the accomplishments of Holmes by speaking of the "factitious importance conferred upon the essay . . . published in an evanescent medical journal in New England in 1843". It is true that this journal ceased to exist after one year. However Holmes reprinted the entire essay with additions in 1855 [2] and in a collection of essay in 1861, and in 1883. It was also printed after Holmes death in 1895. The opinion of Dr. Holmes who had become professor of anatomy and dean of the Harvard Medical School (1847) and one of the founders of the Boston Medical Library were carefully absorbed by generations of students. On the other hand we may truthfully admit that Holmes did not contribute any new ideas which had not been previously expressed in the English medical literature. He quoted them extensively in his essay. Thus Sinclair was of the opinion that Holmes' contribution to obstetric science as science was a negligible quantity. But that Holmes conferred immense benefits on humanity by devoting his literary genius to attracting attention to puerperal fever and trying to suppress the practices which brought childbed fever in their train, is a fact which should be gratefully acknowledged. In 1852, two outstanding obstetricians in the United States, Hugh L. Hodge [13] professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Charles D. Meigs [14] professor of obstetrics at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia rejected Holmes' views. Hodge would not accept the idea that the doctor's hands could be transmitting a murderous disease. Meigs tried to ridicule Holmes first by lecturing on the semantics of the word "contagion", specifically that a contagious disease like variola produces only variola and it is a contradiction that erysipelas could, by contagion, produce P.F. He also used the argument that in contagious diseases there is always an indispensable incubation period while in P.F. the interval between alleged contagion and the outbreak of the fever is much too short. In addition contagious diseases affect the race of mankind without respect of the age or sex of those exposed. There is no presumable exemption among men. Meigs denied that he had ever transmitted P.F. though he had treated patients with this condition and attended normal deliveries at the same time. He attacked Holmes personally by advising to ". . . disregard the jejune and fizenless dreamings of sophomore writers who thunder forth denunciations and would mark, if they might, with a black and ineffaçable spot the hard won reputation of every physician, who in the Providence of God, is called upon to contend with the rage of one of the most destructive of epidemics, and pay an ungrateful service; indispensable to the victims it is allowed to attack and in the propagation of which they have no more to do, than with the propagation of cholera from J essore to San Francisco, and from Mauritius to St. Petersburg" [14]