Observations on the disease usually termed puerperal fever : with cases / by William Campbell.

  • Campbell, William, 1788-1848.
Date:
[1822]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the disease usually termed puerperal fever : with cases / by William Campbell. 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.

    24/48 (page 24)
    lection ; for it there had, the cases would have been far more numerous, in consequence of the great number of women delivered at the time, the situations in which the ge- nerality of them were placed, and our having used no pre- caution, until the last cases occurred, to prevent the infec- tion being carried to those females who were recently deliver- ed. From the 26th of March 1821, the date of the first case, to the 9th of December following, when the last case, of which I have given the outlines occurred, we delivered 463 patients; from which it will appear, that not one in eleven were seized with the epidemic. It is not, therefore, proba- ble, that so great a proportion of our patients would have escaped the disease, had the infection been of so concentrat- ed a nature as we have been taught to believe. On the other hand, how are we to aepount for patients having been seized with it, who had no medical attendant of any description when they were delivered, and sent for none till the disease manifested itself, as happened in Mr Kennedy’s case, and in that of a Mrs Macdonald, residing in Liber- ton’s Wynd ? The appearance of the disease in the woman delivered by Mr Bruce, is not less extraordinary ; for this gentleman never saw a case of it until he attended this pa- tient, who resides at a distance of nearly two miles from town, and who declares that she had no communication with any one of those who were affected. Ever since I have directed my attention to female prac- tice, it has appeared to me, that the disease styled Puerperal Fever, one of the most formidable to which women in child- bed are liable, has been surrounded by a greater mass of inconsistencies than any other: and that, of all the authors who have expressly treated of it, very few, at least in this country, seemed to have any just conception of its nature, or to have treated it as it ought. In submitting the fol- lowing cases, therefore, as well as the preceding observa-