Charles White, surgeon and obstetrician / by J. George Adami.

  • John George Adami
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Charles White, surgeon and obstetrician / by J. George Adami. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    19/24 (page 17)
    ing how it should be prevented. It is contended that this honor belongs to Oliver Wendell Holmes, and that his writings upon the subject in 1843, were the first serious pronouncement upon the matter. At this very moment there is proceeding a con- troversy as to whether the credit be granted to him or to the great Hungarian, Semmelweiss, whose work was published in 1847—to whom it is generally given. Only in a recent number of the British Medical Journal is an article by Gyory, of Buda- pest, pointing out that to Semmelweiss belongs the credit of being the first to propagate what we recognize as the correct view, i. e., that puerperal fever is not a specific disease, and call- ing attention to the fact that great as was the service rendered by Holmes he nevertheless was a contagionist, holding, that is, that every case proceeded from a previous one, id est, that the disease is of a specific nature, and that as such he cannot be re- garded as the first, for others before him had emphasized its contagious nature. In justice to Holmes it must be acknowl- edged that he admitted implicitly that the disease could be com- municated from previous cases of erysipelas and wound fever, even if his main contention was that it is the attendant who carries the disease from case to case. It is, indeed, Holmes’s courageous and eloquent demonstration of this method of con- veyance, and of its frequency, that is his great claim to remem- brance in the matter. The upholders of Semmelweiss base his claim to recognition on the fact that “he discovered that puerperal fever and pyemia were identical processes and proved that puerperal fever may result by the absorption of any decomposing organic substance.” Now from what I have read out to you it is obvious that this is identically White’s teaching. If he did not lay down that it was identical with pyemia he drew a comparison between it and hospital fever, a comparison which it would seem to us is, strictly speaking, more correct, for pyemia proper, as we now understand it, is more particularly due to the pyococcus aureus, whereas hospital and gaol fever according to the descriptions given were characteristically phlegmonous erysipelas and cellu- litis, conditions like puerperal fever, preeminently of the nature of streptococcus infections. Seventy-five years before Semmel- weiss not merely did White teach this but showed in a masterly manner the methods that lead to its arrest. Nay he could state that he and his fellow practitioners using these methods had