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." [Footnote: Edin. Med. and
Surg. Journal, April 1838.] 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 erysipelatous 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 THE BODY. At nine
o'clock the same evening he attended a woman in labor; she was so
nearly delivered that he had scarcely anything to do. The next
morning she had severe rigors, and in forty-eight hours she was a
corpse. Her infant had erysipelas and died in two days.
[Footnote: Lancet, May 2, 1840.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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