s with minute anatomy
and tediously detailed cases, while it is a question whether or not the
"blackdeath" of child-bed is to be scattered broadcast by the agency of
the mother's friend and adviser. Let the men who mould opinions look to
it; if there is any voluntary blindness, any interested oversight, any
culpable negligence, even, in such a matter, and the facts shall reach
the public ear; the pestilence-carrier of the lying-in chamber must look
to God for pardon, for man will never forgive him.

THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER.

In collecting, enforcing, and adding to the evidence accumulated upon
this most serious subject, I would not be understood to imply that there
exists a doubt in the mind of any well-informed member of the 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 q