Mr. White of Manchester says, "Out of
the whole number of lying-in patients whom I have delivered (and I may
safely call it a great one), I have never lost one, nor to the best of my
recollection has one been greatly endangered, by the puerperal, miliary,
low nervous, putrid malignant, or milk fever." Dr. Joseph Clarke informed
Dr. Collins, that in the course of forty-five years' most extensive
practice he lost but four patients from this disease. One of the most
eminent practitioners of Glasgow, who has been engaged in very extensive
practice for upwards of a quarter of a century, testifies that he never
saw more than twelve cases of real puerperal fever.[Lancet, May 4, 1833]
I have myself been told by two gentlemen practising in this city, and
having for many years a large midwifery business, that they had neither
of them lost a patient from this disease, and by one of them that he had
only seen it in consultation with other physicians. In five hundred
cases of midwifery, of which Dr. Storer has given an abstract in the
first number of this Journal, there was only one instance of fatal
puerperal peritonitis.
In the view of these facts, it does appear a singular coincidence, that
one man or woman should have ten, twenty, thirty, or seventy cases of
this rare disease following his or her footsteps with the keenness of a
beagle, through the streets and lanes of a crowded city, while the scores
that cross the same paths on the same errands know it only by name.
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