so that allowance may be made for want of predisposition. Now, if
of negative facts so sifted there could be accumulated a hundred
for every one plain instance of communication here recorded, I
trust it need not be said that we are bound to guard and watch
over the hundredth tenant of our fold, though the ninety and nine
may be sure of escaping the wolf at its entrance. If any one is
disposed, then, to take a hundred instances of lives, endangered
or sacrificed out of those I have mentioned, and make it
reasonably clear that within a similar time and compass TEN
THOUSAND escaped the same exposure, I shall, thank him for his
industry, but I must be permitted to hold to my own practical
conclusions, and beg him to adopt or at least to examine them
also. Children that walk in calico before open fires are not
always burned to death; the instances to the contrary may be
worth recording; but by no means if they are to be used as
arguments against woollen frocks and high fenders.

I am not sure that this paper will escape another remark which it
might be wished were founded in justice. It may be said that the
facts are too generally known and acknowledged to require any
formal argument or exposition, that there is nothing new in the
positions advanced, and no need of laying additional statements
before the profession. But on turning to two works, one almost
universally, and the other extensively, appealed to as authority
in this country, I see ample reason to overlook this objection.
In the last edition of Dewees's Treatise on the "Diseases of
Females" it is expressly said, "In this country, under no
circumstance that puerperal fever has appeared hitherto, does it
afford the slightest ground for the belief that it is
contagious." In the "Philadelphia Practice of Midwifery" not one