hat 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 perished of puerperal fever is so vastly
disproportioned to the relatively small number of autopsies made in this
complaint as compared with typhus or pneumonia (from which last disease
not one case of poisoning happened), and still more from all diseases put
together, that the conclusion is irresistible that a most fearful morbid
poison is often generated in the course of this disease. Whether or not
it is sui generis, confined to this disease, or produced in some others,
as, for instance, erysipelas, I need, not stop to inquire.

In connection with this may be taken the following statement of Dr.
Rigby. "That the discharges from a patient under puerperal fever are in
the highest degree contagious we have abundant evidence in the history of
lying-in hospitals. The puerperal abscesses are also contagious, and may
be communicated to healthy lying-in women by washing with the same
sponge; this fact has been repeatedly proved in the Vienna Hospital; but
they are