Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Ed. by Fleetwood Churchill.
- Fleetwood Churchill
- Date:
- 1849
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Essays on the puerperal fever and other diseases peculiar to women : Selected from the writings of British authors previous to the close of the eighteenth century / Ed. by Fleetwood Churchill. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.
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![Having finished this historical summary, I might now con- clude, as it is far from my purpose to write a treatise upon puerperal fever; but there arc one or two observations 1 should wish to make, rather as suggestions to induce my readers to follow up the subject, than as absolute inferences. The dii in question is so important, and we arc so ignorant of many essentia] points concerning it, that any amount of labour may be well and profitably bestowed upon it. 1. I would remark, then, in the first place, that there appears some special connexion between the epidemics of puerperal fever and Lying-in hospitals. I do not mean exactly to assert that these epidemics always originate with and are kept up by the hospitals ; but 1 refer to the fact that we have no record of any epidemic independent of them in early times. The first in Prance, England and Ireland occurred in the Hotel-Dieu of the former, and the lying-in hospitals of the latter countries ; and although our earlier writers allude to inflammation of the womb, &c.; occurring in childbed, they make no mention of its prevailing extensively, or as an epidemic.1 No doubt, it has since then been observed in private prac- tice in London, Edinburgh, Sunderland, Leeds, &c. &e., but its extent in these cases, is after all comparatively limited, except in very sickly times, and it is often confined chiefly to the practice of a tew individuals. In Dublin, the higher ranks have been singularly free from attacks of the disease. Dr. Joseph Clarke, whose valuable account of puerperal fever as it appeared in tin1 hospital is here reprinted, practised for forty- four years in this city, during which time Ik1 attended 3847 caves of midwifery, and yet in that number he met only three - of acute peritonitis, and three others whose disease ap- pears doubtful, but which might possibly have been uterine phlebitis. And this singular fact, which is to me inexplicable. is confirmed by the experience of Drs. Collin^, Johnson, and other-, as they have assured me. '3. Perhaps the most universal fact connected with puerperal ( opland'a Ih'ctionarj, Part III. p. 503. • Life, w ritings, and Practii e of the late Dr. Jos, Clarke, bj Dr. Collins, p. 12.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21030170_0044.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
