n shown the risk, criminally
encounter it, and convey pestilence and death to the persons they are
employed to aid in the most interesting and suffering period of female
existence." --Copland's Medical Dictionary, Art. Puerperal States and
Diseases, 1852.

"We conceive it unnecessary to go into detail to prove the contagious
nature of this disease, as there are few, if any, American practitioners
who do not believe in this doctrine."--Dr. Lee, in Additions to Article
last cited.

-----------------------

[INTRODUCTORY NOTE.] It happened, some years ago, that a discussion
arose in a Medical Society of which I was a member, involving the
subject of a certain supposed cause of disease, about which something
was known, a good deal suspected, 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 i