PUERPERAL FEVER 263 



fevers would seem to be remote and rarely obvious. Hey 

 refers to two cases of synochus occurring in the Royal 

 Infirmary of Edinburgh, in women who had attended upon 

 puerperal patients. Dr. Collins refers to several instances 

 in which puerperal fever has appeared to originate from a 

 continued proximity to patients suffering with typhus." 



Such occurrences as those just mentioned, though most 

 important to be remembered and guarded against, hardly 

 attract our notice in the midst of the gloomy facts by 

 which they are surrounded. Of these facts, at the risk of 

 fatiguing repetitions, I have summoned a sufficient number, 

 as I believe, to convince the most incredulous that every 

 attempt to disguise the truth which underlies them all is 

 useless. 



It is true that some of the historians of the disease, 

 especially Hulme, Hull, and Leake, in England; Tonnelle*, 

 Duges, and Baudelocque, in France, profess not to have 

 found puerperal fever contagious. At the most they give 

 us mere negative facts, worthless against an extent of evi- 

 dence which now overlaps the widest range of doubt, and 

 doubles upon itself in the redundancy of superfluous demon- 

 stration. Examined in detail, this and much of the show of 

 testimony brought up to stare the daylight of conviction out 

 of countenance, proves to be in a great measure unmeaning 

 and inapplicable, as might be easily shown were it neces- 

 sary. Nor do I feel the necessity of enforcing the conclu- 

 sion which arises spontaneously from the facts which have 

 been enumerated by formally citing the opinions of those 

 grave authorities who have for the last half-century been 

 sounding the unwelcome truth it has cost so many lives to 

 establish. 



"It is to the British practitioner," says Dr. Rigby, "that we 

 are indebted for strongly insisting upon this important and 

 dangerous character of puerperal fever." 14 



The names of Gordon, John Clarke, Denman, Burns, 

 Young," Hamilton," Haighton," Good," Waller," Blundell, 



* Treatise on Midwifery, p. a8. 



* British and Foreign Med. Rev. for January, 1842. 

 m Encyc. Britannica, xiii, 467, art., " Medicine." 



m Outlines of Midwifery, p. 109. * Oral Lectures, etc. 



" Studv of Medicine, ii, 195. 



Medical and Physical Journal, July, 1830. 



