PUERPERAL FEVER 255 



of case No. 5, but from some cause which I do not now 

 recollect it was not obtained 



"You wish to know whether I wore the same clothes when 

 attending the different cases. I cannot positively say, but I 

 should think I did not, as the weather became warmer after 

 the first two cases ; I therefore think it probable that I made 

 a change of at least a part of my dress. I have had no other 

 case of puerperal fever in my own practice for three years, 

 save those above related, and I do not remember to have 

 lost a patient before with this disease. While absent, last 

 July, I visited two patients sick with puerperal fever, with 

 a friend of mine in the country. Both of them recovered. 



"The cases that I have recorded were not confined to any 

 particular constitution or temperament, but it seized upon 

 the strong and the weak, the old and the young one being 

 over forty years, and the youngest under eighteen years of 

 age. ... If the disease is of an erysipelatous nature, as 

 many suppose, contagionists may perhaps find some ground 

 for their belief in the fact that, for two weeks previous to my 

 first case of puerperal fever, I had been attending a severe 

 case of erysipelas, and the infection may have been conveyed 

 through me to the patient; but, on the other hand, why is not 

 this the case with other physicians, or with the same physician 

 at all times, for since my return from the country I have 

 had a more inveterate case of erysipelas than ever before, 

 and no difficulty whatever has attended any of my midwifery 

 cases?" 



I am assured, on unquestionable authority, that " about 

 three years since a gentleman in extensive midwifery busi- 

 ness, in a neighboring State, lost in the course of a few 

 weeks eight patients in child-bed, seven of them being un- 

 doubted cases of puerperal fever. No other physician of the 

 town lost a single patient of this disease during the same 

 period." And from what I have heard in conversation with 

 some of our most experienced practitioners, I am inclined to 

 think many cases of the kind might be brought to light by 

 extensive inquiry. 



This long catalogue of melancholy histories assumes a still 

 darker aspect when we remember how kindly nature deals 

 with the parturient female, when she is not immersed in 



