Let the men who mould
opinions look to it; if there is any voluntary blindness, any interested
oversight, any culpable negligence, even, in such a matter, and the facts
shall reach the public ear; the pestilence-carrier of the lying-in
chamber must look to God for pardon, for man will never forgive him.
THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER.
In collecting, enforcing, and adding to the evidence accumulated upon
this most serious subject, I would not be understood to imply that there
exists a doubt in the mind of any well-informed member of the medical
profession as to the fact that puerperal fever is sometimes communicated
from one person to another, both directly and indirectly. In the present
state of our knowledge upon this point I should consider such doubts
merely as a proof that the sceptic had either not examined the evidence,
or, having examined it, refused to accept its plain and unavoidable
consequences. I should be sorry to think, with Dr. Rigby, that it was a
case of "oblique vision;" I should be unwilling to force home the
argumentum ad hominem of Dr. Blundell, but I would not consent to make a
question of a momentous fact which is no longer to be considered as a
subject for trivial discussions, but to be acted upon with silent
promptitude. It signifies nothing that wise and experienced
practitioners have sometimes doubted the reality of the danger in
question; no man has the right to doubt it any longer.
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