he took a high place among the most distinguished group of
writers that America has yet produced.




THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER

Note.--This essay appeared first in 1843, in The New England
Quarterly Journal of Medicine, and was reprinted in the "Medical
Essays" in 1855.


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 sometimes 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 momentous 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