But if, on a more extended observation, it should
be found that the same ominous groups of cases clustering about
individual practitioners were observed in a remote country, at different
times, and in widely separated regions, it would seem incredible that any
should be found too prejudiced or indolent to accept the solemn truth
knelled into their ears by the funeral bells from both sides of the
ocean,--the plain conclusion that the physician and the disease entered,
hand in hand, into the chamber of the unsuspecting patient.
That such series of cases have been observed in this country, and in this
neighborhood, I proceed to show.
In Dr. Francis's "Notes to Denman's Midwifery," a passage is cited from
Dr. Hosack, in which he refers to certain puerperal cases which proved
fatal to several lying-in women, and in some of which the disease was
supposed to be conveyed by the accoucheurs themselves.
A writer in the "New York Medical and Physical Journal" for October,
1829, in speaking of the occurrence of puerperal fever, confined to one
man's practice, remarks, "We have known cases of this kind occur, though
rarely, in New York."
I mention these little hints about the occurrence of such cases, partly
because they are the first I have met with in American medical
literature, but more especially because they serve to remind us that
behind the fearful array of published facts there lies a dark list of
similar events, unwritten in the records of science, but long remembered
by many a desolated fireside.
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