“Up to this period,” he remarks, “I am not informed that a single case had occurred in the practice of any other physician.  Since that period I have had no fatal case in my practice, although I have had several dangerous cases.  I have attended in all twenty cases of this disease, of which four have been fatal.  I am not aware that there has been any other case in the town of distinct puerperal peritonitis, although I am willing to admit my information may be very defective on this point.  I have been told of some I ‘mixed cases,’ and ‘morbid affections after delivery.’”

In the “Quarterly Summary of the Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia” may be found some most extraordinary developments respecting a series of cases occurring in the practice of a member of that body.

Dr. Condie called the attention of the Society to the prevalence, at the present time, of puerperal fever of a peculiarly insidious and malignant character.  “In the practice of one gentleman extensively engaged as an obstetrician, nearly every female he has attended in confinement, during several weeks past, within the above limits” (the southern sections and neighboring districts), “had been attacked by the fever.”

“An important query presents itself, the Doctor observed, in reference to the particular form of fever now prevalent.  Is it, namely, capable of being propagated by contagion, and is a physician who has been in attendance upon a case of the disease warranted in continuing, without interruption, his practice as an obstetrician?  Dr. C., although not a believer in the contagious character of many of those affections generally supposed to be propagated in this manner, has nevertheless become convinced by the facts that have fallen under his notice, that the puerperal fever now prevailing is capable of being communicated by contagion.  How otherwise can be explained the very curious circumstance of the disease in one district being exclusively confined to the practice of a single physician, a Fellow of this College, extensively engaged in obstetrical practice,—­while no instance of the disease has occurred in the patients under the care of any other accoucheur practising within the same district; scarcely a female that has been delivered for weeks past has escaped an attack?”

Dr. Rutter, the practitioner referred to, “observed that, after the occurrence of a number of cases of the disease in his practice, he had left the city and remained absent for a week, but on returning, no article of clothing he then wore having been used by him before, one of the very first cases of parturition he attended was followed by an attack of the fever, and terminated fatally; he cannot, readily, therefore, believe in the transmission of the disease from female to female, in the person or clothes of the physician.”

The meeting at which these remarks were made was held on the 3d of May, 1842.  In a letter dated December 20, 1842, addressed to Dr. Meigs, and to be found in the “Medical Examiner,” he speaks of “those horrible cases of puerperal fever, some of which you did me the favor to see with me during the past summer,” and talks of his experience in the disease, “now numbering nearly seventy cases, all of which have occurred within less than a twelvemonth past.”