PUERPERAL FEVER 259 



writer in the "British and Foreign Medical Review," from 

 whom I quote this statement, and who is no other than Dr. 

 Rigby, adds: "We trust that this fact alone will forever 

 silence such doubts, and stamp the well-merited epithet of 

 'criminal/ as above quoted, upon such attempts.* 7 



From the cases given by Mr. Ingleby I select the following: 

 Two gentlemen, after having been engaged in conducting the 

 post-mortem examination of a case of puerperal fever, went 

 in the same dress, each respectively, to a case of midwifery. 

 "The one patient was seized with the rigor about thirty hours 

 afterwards. The other patient was seized with a rigor the 

 third morning after delivery. One recovered, one died'" 9 

 One of these same gentlemen attended another woman in 

 the same clothes two days after the autopsy referred to. 

 "The rigor did not take place until the evening of the fifth 

 day from the first visit. Result fatal." These cases belonged 

 to a series of seven, the first of which was thought to have 

 originated in a case of erysipelas. "Several cases of a mild 

 character followed the foregoing seven, and their nature 

 being now most unequivocal, my friend declined visiting all 

 midwifery cases for a time, and there was no recurrence of 

 the disease." These cases occurred in 1833. Five of them 

 proved fatal. Mr. Ingleby gives another series of seven 

 cases which occurred to a practitioner in 1836, the first of 

 which was also attributed to his having opened several 

 eryslpelatous abscesses a short time previously. 



I need not refer to the case lately read before this society, 

 in which a physician went, soon after performing an autopsy 

 of a case of puerperal fever, to a woman in labor, who was 

 seized with the same disease and perished. The forfeit of 

 that error has been already paid. 



At a meeting of the Medical and Chirurgical Society before 

 referred to, Dr. Merriman related an instance occurring in 

 his own practice, which excites a reasonable suspicion that 

 two lives were sacrificed to a still less dangerous experiment. 

 He was at the examination of a case of puerperal fever at 

 two o'clock in the afternoon. He took care not to touch tht 

 body. At nine o'clock the same evening he attended a woman 



*Brit. and For. Medical Rtvitw for January, 1841, p. nj. 

 Edi*. M*d. and Surg. Journal, April. 1838. 



