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,” [Footnote:  For January 21, 1843.] 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 twelve-month past.”

And Dr. Meigs asserts, on the same page, “Indeed, I believe that his practice in that department of the profession was greater than that of any other gentleman, which was probably the cause of his seeing a greater number of the cases.”  This from a professor of midwifery, who some time ago assured a gentleman whom he met in consultation that the night on which they met was the eighteenth in succession that he himself had been summoned from his repose, [Footnote:  Medical Examiner for December 10, 1842.] seems hardly satisfactory.

I must call the attention of the inquirer most particularly to the Quarterly Report above referred to, and the letters of Dr. Meigs and Dr. Rutter, to be found in the “Medical Examiner.”  Whatever impression they may produce upon his mind, I trust they will at least convince him that there is some reason for looking into this apparently uninviting subject.

At a meeting of the College of Physicians just mentioned Dr. Warrington stated that a few days after assisting at an autopsy of puerperal peritonitis, in which he laded out the contents of the abdominal cavity with his hands, he was called upon to deliver three women in rapid succession.  All of these women were attacked with different forms of what is commonly called puerperal fever.  Soon after these he saw two other patients, both on the same day, with the same disease.  Of these five patients, two died.

At the same meeting Dr. West mentioned a fact related to him by Dr. Samuel Jackson, of Northumberland.  Seven females, delivered by Dr. Jackson in rapid succession, while practising in Northumberland County, were all attacked with puerperal fever, and five of them died.  “Women,” he said, “who had expected me to attend upon them, now becoming alarmed, removed out of my reach, and others sent for a physician residing several miles distant.  These women, as well as those attended by midwives, all did well; nor did we hear of any deaths in child-bed within a radius of fifty miles, excepting two, and these I afterwards ascertained to have been caused by other diseases.”  He underwent, as he thought, a thorough purification, and still his next patient was attacked with the disease and died.  He was led to suspect that the contagion might have been carried in the gloves which he had worn in attendance upon the previous cases.  Two months or more after this he had two other cases.  He could find nothing to account for these unless it were the instruments for giving enemata, which had been used in two of the former cases and were employed by these patients.  When the first case occurred, he was attending and dressing a limb extensively mortified from erysipelas, and went immediately to the accouchement with his clothes and gloves most thoroughly imbued with its effluvia.  And here I may mention that this very Dr. Samael Jackson, of Northumberland, is one of Dr. Dewees’s authorities against contagion.