In December, 1830, a midwife, who had attended two fatal cases of puerperal fever at the British Lying-in Hospital, examined a patient who had just been admitted, to ascertain if labor had commenced.  This patient remained two days in the expectation that labor would come on, when she returned home and was then suddenly taken in labor and delivered before she could set out for the hospital.  She went on favorably for two days, and was then taken with puerperal fever and died in thirty-six hours.

“A young practitioner, contrary to advice, examined the body of a patient who had died from puerperal fever; there was no epidemic at the time; the case appeared to be purely sporadic.  He delivered three other women shortly afterwards; they all died with puerperal fever, the symptoms of which broke out very soon after labor.  The patients of his colleague did well, except one, where he assisted to remove some coagula from the uterus; she was attacked in the same manner as those whom he had attended, and died also.”  The writer in the “British and Foreign Medical Review,” from whom I quote this statement,—­and who is no other than Dr. Rigby, adds, “We trust that this fact alone will forever silence such doubts, and stamp the well-merited epithet of ‘criminal,’ as above quoted, upon such attempts.” [Brit. and For.  Medical Review for Jan. 1842, p. 112.]

From the cases given by Mr. Ingleby, I select the following.  Two gentlemen, after having been engaged in conducting the post-mortem examination of a case of puerperal fever, went in the same dress, each respectively, to a case of midwifery.  “The one patient was seized with the rigor about thirty hours afterwards.  The other patient was seized with a rigor the third morning after delivery.  One recovered, one died.” [Edin.  Med. and Surg.  Journal, April, 1838.]

One of these same gentlemen attended another woman in the same clothes two days after the autopsy referred to.  “The rigor did not take place until the evening of the fifth day from the first visit.  Result fatal.”  These cases belonged to a series of seven, the first of which was thought to have originated in a case of erysipelas.  “Several cases of a mild character followed the foregoing seven, and their nature being now most unequivocal, my friend declined visiting all midwifery cases for a time, and there was no recurrence of the disease.”  These cases occurred in 1833.  Five of them proved fatal.  Mr. Ingleby gives another series of seven eases which occurred to a practitioner in 1836, the first of which was also attributed to his having opened several erysipelatous abscesses a short time previously.

I need not refer to the case lately read before this Society, in which a physician went, soon after performing an autopsy of a case of puerperal fever, to a woman in labor, who was seized with the same disease and perished.  The forfeit of that error has been already paid.