Currents and counter-currents in medical science : With other addresses and essays / By Oliver Wendell Holmes.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Date:
- 1861
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Currents and counter-currents in medical science : With other addresses and essays / By Oliver Wendell Holmes. 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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![course of a few weeks eight patients in child-bed, seven of them being undoubted cases of puerperal fever. Xo 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 as- sumes 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 thou- sand 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.t In the Dubhn Lying-in Hospital, during the seven years of Dr. Collins's mastership, there was one case of puerperal fever to 178 deliv- eries, or less than six to the thousand, and one death from this disease in 278 cases, or between three and four to the thousand.:]: Yet during this period the disease was endemic in the hospital, and might have * 1st Report, p. 105. J Collins's Midwifery, p. 228, &c. t 2d Report, p. 73.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21019745_0277.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
