Gossiping friends,
wet-nurses, monthly nurses, the practitioner himself, these are the
channels by which, as I suspect, the infection is principally conveyed."
At a meeting of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, Dr. King
mentioned that some years since a practitioner at Woolwich lost sixteen
patients from puerperal fever in the same year. He was compelled to give
up practice for one or two years, his business being divided among the
neighboring practitioners. No case of puerperal fever occurred
afterwards, neither had any of the neighboring surgeons any cases of this
disease.
At the same meeting Mr. Hutchinson mentioned the occurrence of three
consecutive cases of puerperal fever, followed subsequently by two
others, all in the practice of one accoucheur.[Lancet, May 2, 1840.]
Dr. Lee makes the following statement: "In the last two weeks of
September, 1827, five fatal cases of uterine inflammation came under our
observation. All the individuals so attacked had been attended in labor
by the same midwife, and no example of a febrile or inflammatory disease
of a serious nature occurred during that period among the other patients
of the Westminster General Dispensary, who had been attended by the other
midwives belonging to that institution."
The recurrence of long series of cases like those I have cited, reported
by those most interested to disbelieve in contagion, scattered along
through an interval of half a century, might have been thought sufficient
to satisfy the minds of all inquirers that here was something more than a
singular coincidence.
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