Erysipelas and child-bed fever / Thomas C. Minor.

  • Minor Thomas C.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Erysipelas and child-bed fever / Thomas C. Minor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    nication with persons afiFected with puerperal fever; tluit some in- fluences, carried either by the patient herself, or by her attendants, from other contagious diseases, such as erysipelas, typhus, and other low fevers, has in many cases given rise to puerperal fever among lying-in patients, is a fiict that admits of no doubt. Sa^s Blundell :* It is much disputed by some, whether this disease is infectious; but, however this point may be decided, or unsettled, the facts affirmative of infection are so strong, that according.'y it becomes our duty to act. Blackman, of Edinburg, was the first who believed the disease was directly communicated hy a ]X)ison introduced by the physicians or attendant, subter ungues, during the per vaginam examinations. Says Sir James Simpson -.f I shall content myself by observing here (what I have taught elsewhere for the last ten yeai-s), that there exists, I believe on record, a series of facts amply sufficient to prove this, at least, that patienos during labor have been and may be locally innoculated with a materies morbi capable of exciting puerperal fever; that this maieries rnorbi is liable to be innoculated into the dilated and abra'dcd lining membrane of the maternal passages during delivery, br the fingers of the attendant; that thus in transferring it'from one patient to another, the fingers of the attendant act, as it were, like the ivory points used by some of the early vaccinators. Under the name of peritoneal fever, GoochJ speaks of infection thus : I'acts, such as these, have long led to the suspicion that the disease might be communicated from one lying-in woman to an- other, in the clothes of the practitioner or nurse, or the furniture of a tainted chamber. In speaking of child-bed fever and its contagion, Meigs§ remarks (as late as 1862); I have cai'efuUy read the cases, considered the arguments, and Aviinessed many of the events upon which so confident a belief of the contagion is founded, and I aver that I do not discover in them any force, that ought to convince me ol'the contagious nature of the disorder; wherefore I utterly reject and deny the doctrine as one injurious to the pro- fession of medicine, pernicious to the people, by filling the minds of interested parties with alarm, and as propagating, from age to Blundell. The Principles unci Priictice o/'Obstetricy. Washington, 1834, p. 473. tThe Obstetric Memoirs and Contributions of'Jiimes Y. Simpson, M. D. Edited by Priestly and Storor. Philadelphia, 1856, Vol. II, p. 31. X Gooch. Diseases Peculiar to Women. Philadelphia, 1830, p. 20. 2 Meigs' System of Obstetrics. Philadelphia, 1863, p. 614, et s q.