The contagiousness of puerperal fever / by Oliver W. Holmes.

  • Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894.
Date:
[1843]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The contagiousness of puerperal fever / by Oliver W. Holmes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    [O-IaJ / THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER. READ BEFORE THE BOSTON SOCIETY FOR MEDICAL IMPROVEMENT, AND PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE SOCIETY.* BY OLIVER W. HOLMES, M.D. In collecting; enforcing and adding to the evidence accumulated upon this most serious subject, I would not be understood to imply that there exists a doubt in the mind of any well-informed member of the medical profession as to the fact that puerperal fever is some- times communicated from one person to another, both directly and indirectly. In the present state of our knowledge upon this point I should consider such doubts merely as a proof that the sceptic had either not examined the evidence, or, having examined it, refused to accept its plain and unavoidable consequences. I should be sorry to think with Dr. Rigby, that it was a case of oblique vision ; I should be unwilling to force home the argumentum ad hominem of# Dr. Blundell, but I would not consent to make a question of a mo- mentous fact, which is no longer to be considered as a subject for trivial discussions, but to be acted upon with silent promptitude. It signifies nothing that wise and experienced practitioners have sometimes doubted the reality of the danger in question ; no man has the right to doubt it any longer. No negative facts, no opposing