e medical
profession as to the fact that puerperal fever is sometimes communicated
from one person to another, both directly and indirectly. In the present
state of our knowledge upon this point I should consider such doubts
merely as a proof that the sceptic had either not examined the evidence,
or, having examined it, refused to accept its plain and unavoidable
consequences. I should be sorry to think, with Dr. Rigby, that it was a
case of "oblique vision;" I should be unwilling to force home the
argumentum ad hominem of Dr. Blundell, but I would not consent to make a
question of a momentous fact which is no longer to be considered as a
subject for trivial discussions, but to be acted upon with silent
promptitude. It signifies nothing that wise and experienced
practitioners have sometimes doubted the reality of the danger in
question; no man has the right to doubt it any longer. No negative
facts, no opposing opinions, be they what they may, or whose they may,
can form any answer to the series of cases now within the reach of all
who choose to explore the records of medical science.

If there are some who conceive that any important end would be answered
by recording such opinions, or by collecting the history of all the cases
they could find in which no evidence of the influence of contagion
existed, I believe they are in error. Suppose a few writers of authority
can be found to profess a disbelief in contagion,--and they are very few
compared with those who think differently,--is it quite clear that they
formed their opinions on a view of all the facts, or is it not apparent
that they relied mostly on their own solitary experience? Still further,
of those whose names are quoted, is it not true that scarcely a single
one could by any possibility have known the half or the tenth of the
facts bearing on the subject which have reached such a frightful amount
within the last few years? Again, as to the utility of negative facts,
as we may briefly call them,--instances, namely, in which exposure has
not been followed by disease,--although, like other truths, they may be
worth knowing, I do not see that they are like to shed any important
light upon the subject before us. Every such instance requires a good
deal of circumstantial explanation before it can be accepted. It is not
enough that a practitioner should have had a single case of puerperal
fever not followed by others. It must be known whether he attended
others whi