d giant who walks in the noonday,
and sleeps not in the midnight, yet still toiling, not merely for itself
and the present moment, but for the race and the future, I have lifted
my voice against this lifeless delusion, rolling its shapeless bulk into
the path of a noble science it is too weak to strike, or to injure.

THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER

Printed in 1843; reprinted with additions, 1855.

THE POINT AT ISSUE.

THE AFFIRMATIVE.

"The disease known as Puerperal Fever is so far contagious as to be
frequently carried from patient to patient by physicians and nurses." O.
W. Holmes, 1843.

THE NEGATIVE.

"The result of the whole discussion will, I trust, serve, not only to
exalt your views of the value and dignity of our profession, but to
divest your minds of the overpowering dread that you can ever become,
especially to woman, under the extremely interesting circumstances
of gestation and parturition, the minister of evil; that you can ever
convey, in any possible manner, a horrible virus, so destructive in
its effects, and so mysterious in its operations as that attributed to
puerperal fever."--Professor Hodge, 1852.

"I prefer to attribute them to accident, or Providence, of which I can
form a conception, rather than to a contagion of which I cannot form any
clear idea, at least as to this particular malady."--Professor Meigs,
1852.

"... in the propagation of which they have no more to do, than with the
propagation of cholera from Jessore to San Francisco, and from Mauritius
to St. Petersburg."--Professor Meigs, 1854.

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"I arrived at that certainty in the matter, that I could venture to
foretell what women would be affected with the disease, upon hearing by
what midwife they were to be delivered, or by what nurse they were to
be attended, during their lying-in; and, almost in every instance, my
prediction was verified."--Gordon, 1795.

"A certain number of deaths is caused every year by the contagion of
puerperal fever, communicated by the nurses and medical attendants."
Farr, in Fifth Annual Report of Registrar-General of England, 1843.

"... boards of health, if such exist, or, without them, the medical
institutions of a country, should have the power of coercing, or of
inflicting some kind of punishment on those who recklessly go from cases
of puerperal fevers to parturient or puerperal females, without
using due precaution; and who, having bee