At a meeting of the Medical and Chirurgical Society before referred to, Dr. Merriman related an instance occurring in his own practice, which excites a reasonable suspicion that two lives were sacrificed to a still less dangerous experiment.  He was at the examination of a case of puerperal fever at two o’clock in the afternoon.  He took care not to touch the body.  At nine o’clock the same evening he attended a woman in labor; she was so nearly delivered that he had scarcely anything to do.  The next morning she had severe rigors, and in forty-eight hours she was a corpse.  Her infant had erysipelas and died in two days. [Lancet, May 2, 1840.]

In connection with the facts which have been stated, it seems proper to allude to the dangerous and often fatal effects which have followed from wounds received in the post-mortem examination of patients who have died of puerperal fever.  The fact that such wounds are attended with peculiar risk has been long noticed.  I find that Chaussier was in the habit of cautioning his students against the danger to which they were exposed in these dissections. [Stein, L’Art d’Accoucher, 1794; Dict. des Sciences Medicales, art.  “Puerperal.”] The head pharmacien of the Hotel Dieu, in his analysis of the fluid effused in puerperal peritonitis, says that practitioners are convinced of its deleterious qualities, and that it is very dangerous to apply it to the denuded skin. [Journal de Pharmacie, January, 1836.] Sir Benjamin Brodie speaks of it as being well known that the inoculation of lymph or pus from the peritoneum of a puerperal patient is often attended with dangerous and even fatal symptoms.  Three cases in confirmation of this statement, two of them fatal, have been reported to this Society within a few months.

Of about fifty cases of injuries of this kind, of various degrees of severity, which I have collected from different sources, at least twelve were instances of infection from puerperal peritonitis.  Some of the others are so stated as to render it probable that they may have been of the same nature.  Five other cases were of peritoneal inflammation; three in males.  Three were what was called enteritis, in one instance complicated with erysipelas; but it is well known that this term has been often used to signify inflammation of the peritoneum covering the intestines.  On the other hand, no case of typhus or typhoid fever is mentioned as giving rise to dangerous consequences, with the exception of the single instance of an undertaker mentioned by Mr. Travers, who seems to have been poisoned by a fluid which exuded from the body.  The other accidents were produced by dissection, or some other mode of contact with bodies of patients who had died of various affections.  They also differed much in severity, the cases of puerperal origin being among the most formidable and fatal.  Now a moment’s reflection will show that the number of cases of serious consequences ensuing from the dissection of the bodies of those who had