248 O. W. HOLMES 



with puerperal fever, and five of them died. " Women,' 

 he said, " who had expected me to attend upon them, 

 now becoming alarmed, removed out of my reach, and 

 others sent for a physician residing several miles distant. 

 These women, as well as those attended by midwives, all 

 did well; nor did we hear of any deaths in child-bed 

 within a radius of fifty miles, excepting two, and these I 

 afterwards ascertained to have been caused by other dis- 

 eases." He underwent, as he thought, a thorough purifica- 

 tion, and still his next patient was attacked with the dis- 

 ease and died. He was led to suspect that the contagion 

 might have been carried in the gloves which he had worn 

 in attendance upon the previous cases. Two months or 

 more after this he had two other cases. He could find 

 nothing to account for these unless it were the instru- 

 ments for giving enemata, which had been used in two 

 of the former cases and were employed by these patients. 

 When the first case occurred, he was attending and dress- 

 ing a limb extensively mortified from erysipelas, and went 

 immediately to the accouchement with his clothes and 

 gloves most thoroughly imbued with its effluvia. And 

 here I may mention that this very Dr. Samuel Jackson, of 

 Northumberland, is one of Dr. Dewees's authorities against 

 contagion. 



The three following statements are now for the first 

 time given to the public. All of the cases referred to 

 occurred within this State, and two of the three series in 

 Boston and its immediate vicinity. 



I. The first is a series of cases which took place during 

 the last spring in a town at some distance from this 

 neighborhood. A physician of that town, Dr. C, had the 

 following consecutive cases: 



No. i, delivered March 20, died March 24. 



" 2, " April 9, " April 14. 



" 3, " " 10, " " 14. 



" 4, " " n, " " 18. 



" 5. " " 27, " May 3. 



" 6, " " 28, had some symptoms, recovered. 



" 7, " May 8, had some symptoms, also recovered. 





