No other physician of the town
lost a single patient of this disease during the same period." And from
what I have heard in conversation with some of our most experienced
practitioners, I am inclined to think many cases of the kind might be
brought to light by extensive inquiry.
This long catalogue of melancholy histories assumes a still darker aspect
when we remember how kindly nature deals with the parturient female, when
she is not immersed in the virulent atmosphere of an impure lying-in
hospital, or poisoned in her chamber by the unsuspected breath of
contagion. From all causes together, not more than four deaths in a
thousand births and miscarriages happened in England and Wales during the
period embraced by the first "Report of the Registrar-General." In the
second Report the mortality was shown to be about five in one thousand.
In the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, during the seven years of Dr. Collins's
mastership, there was one case of puerperal fever to 178 deliveries, or
less than six to the thousand, and one death from this disease in 278
cases, or between three and four to the thousand a yet during this period
the disease was endemic in the hospital, and might have gone on to rival
the horrors of the pestilence of the Maternite, had not the poison been
destroyed by a thorough purification.
In private practice, leaving out of view the cases that are to be
ascribed to the self-acting system of propagation, it would seem that the
disease must be far from common.
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