uspected, and not a little feared. The discussion was
suggested by a case, reported at the preceding meeting, of a physician
who made an examination of the body of a patient who had died with
puerperal fever, and who himself died in less than a week, apparently in
consequence of a wound received at the examination, having attended
several women in confinement in the mean time, all of whom, as it was
alleged, were attacked with puerperal fever.

Whatever apprehensions and beliefs were entertained, it was plain that a
fuller knowledge of the facts relating to the subject would be acceptable
to all present. I therefore felt that it would be doing a good service
to look into the best records I could find, and inquire of the most
trustworthy practitioners I knew, to learn what experience had to teach
in the matter, and arrived at the results contained in the following
pages.

The Essay was read before the Boston Society for Medical Improvement,
and, at the request of the Society, printed in the "New England Quarterly
Journal of Medicine and Surgery" for April, 1843. As this Journal never
obtained a large circulation, and ceased to be published after a year's
existence, and as the few copies I had struck off separately were soon
lost sight of among the friends to whom they were sent, the Essay can
hardly be said to have been fully brought before the Profession.

The subject of this Paper has the same profound interest for me at the
present moment as it had when I was first collecting the terrible
evidence out of which, as it seems to me, the commonest exercise of
reason could not help shaping the truth it involved. It is not merely on
account of the bearing of the question,--if there is a question,--on all
that is most sacred in human life and happiness, that the subject cannot
lose its interest. It is because it seems evident that a fair statement
of the facts must produce its proper influence on a very large proportion
of well-constituted and unprejudiced minds. Individuals may, here and
there, resist the practical bearing of the evidence on their own feelings
or interests; some may fail to see its meaning, as some persons may be
found who cannot tell red from green; but I cannot doubt that most
readers will be satisfied and convinced, to loathing, long before they
have finished the dark obituary calendar laid before them.

I do not know that I shall ever again have so good an opportunity of
being useful as was granted m