THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF 

 PUERPERAL FEVER 



IN collecting, enforcing and adding to the evidence ac- 

 cumulated upon this most serious subject, I would not 

 be understood to imply that there exists a doubt in 

 the mind of any well-informed member of the medical 

 profession as to the fact that puerperal fever is some- 

 times communicated from one person to another, both di- 

 rectly and indirectly. In the present state of our knowl- 

 edge upon this point I should consider such doubts merely 

 as a proof that the sceptic had either not examined the 

 evidence, or, having examined it, refused to accept its 

 plain and unavoidable consequences. I should be sorry to 

 think, with Dr. Rigby, that it was a case of "oblique 

 vision " ; I should be unwilling to force home the argumen- 

 tum ad hominem of Dr. Blundell, but I would not consent 

 to make a question of a momentous fact which is no longer 

 to be considered as a subject for trivial discussions, but 

 to be acted upon with silent promptitude. It signifies noth- 

 ing that wise and experienced practitioners have sometimes 

 doubted the reality of the danger in question; no man has 

 the right to doubt it any longer. No negative facts, no 

 opposing opinions, be they what they may, or whose they 

 may, can form any answer to the series of cases now 

 within the reach of all who choose to explore the records 

 of medical science. 



If there are some who conceive that any important end 

 would be answered by recording such opinions, or by col- 

 lecting the history of all the cases they could find in which 

 no evidence of the influence of contagion existed, I believe 

 they are in error. Suppose a few writers of authority can 



Not*. ThU essay appeared first in 1843, in The New England Quarterly 

 Journal of Mtdtcint, and was reprinted in the "Medical Essay*" in 1855. 



235 



