uoted, 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 while this case was in progress, whether he went directly from
one chamber to others, whether he took any, and what precautions. It is
important to know that several women were exposed to infection
derived from the patient, so that allowance may be made for want of
predisposition. Now if of negative facts so sifted there could be
accumulated a hundred for every one plain instance of communication here
recorded, I trust it need not be said that we are bound to guard and
watch over the hundredth tenant of our fold, though the ninety and
nine may be sure of escaping the wolf at its entrance. If any one is
disposed, then, to take a hundred instances of lives endangered or
sacrificed out of those I have mentioned, and make it reasonably clear
that within a similar time and compass ten thousand escaped the same
exposure, I shall thank him for his industry, but I must be permitted to
hold to my own practical conclusions, and beg him to adopt or at least
to examine them also. Children that walk in calico before open fires are
not always burned to death; the instances to the contrary may be worth
recording; but by no means if they are to be used as arguments against
woollen frocks and high fenders.

I am not sure that this paper will escape another remark which it might
be wished were founded in justice. It may be said that the facts are
too generally known and acknowledged to require any formal argument or
exposition, that there is nothing new in the positions advanced, and
no need of laying additional statements before the Profession. But on
turning to two works, one almost universally, and the other extensively
appealed to as authority in this country, I see ample reason to
overlook th