" [Lond. Med. Gaz. May 2, 1835.]
Dr. Ramsbotham asserted, in a Lecture at the London Hospital, that he had
known the disease spread through a particular district, or be confined to
the practice of a particular person, almost every patient being attacked
with it, while others had not a single case. It seemed capable, he
thought, of conveyance, not only by common modes; but through the dress
of the attendants upon the patient.
In a letter to be found in the "London Medical Gazette" for January,
1840, Mr. Roberton of Manchester makes the statement which I here give in
a somewhat condensed form.
A midwife delivered a woman on the 4th of December, 1830, who died soon
after with the symptoms of puerperal fever. In one month from this date
the same midwife delivered thirty women, residing in different parts of
an extensive suburb, of which number sixteen caught the disease and all
died. These were the only cases which had occurred for a considerable
time in Manchester. The other midwives connected with the same
charitable institution as the woman already mentioned are twenty-five in
number, and deliver, on an average, ninety women a week, or about three
hundred and eighty a month. None of these women had a case of puerperal
fever. "Yet all this time this woman was crossing the other midwives in
every direction, scores of the patients of the charity being delivered by
them in the very same quarters where her cases of fever were happening.
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