Remarks at the Medical and Chirurgical Society, "Lancet," 1840.
Dr. Rigby's "System of Midwifery," 1841.
"Nunneley on Erysipelas," a work which contains a large number of
references on the subject, 1841.
"British and Foreign Quarterly Review," 1842.
Dr. S. Jackson, of Northumberland, as already quoted from the
Summary of the College of Physicians, 1842.
And, lastly, a startling series of cases by Mr. Storrs, of
Doncaster, to be found in the "American Journal of the Medical
Sciences" for January, 1843.
The relation of puerperal fever with other continued 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. [Footnote: Treatise on Midwifery, p. 228.]
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 evidence which now overlaps the
widest range of doubt, and doubles upon itself in the redundancy
of superfluous demonstration. 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
necessary. Nor do I feel the necessity of enforcing the
conclusion 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." [Footnote: British and Foreign
Med. Rev. for January, 1842.]
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