of the attendants upon the patient.

In a letter to be found in the "London Medical Gazette" for January,
1840, Mr. Roberton of Manchester makes the statement which I here give
in a somewhat condensed form.

A midwife delivered a woman on the 4th of December, 1830, who died soon
after with the symptoms of puerperal fever. In one month from this date
the same midwife delivered thirty women, residing in different parts of
an extensive suburb, of which number sixteen caught the disease and all
died. These were the only cases which had occurred for a considerable
time in Manchester. The other midwives connected with the same
charitable institution as the woman already mentioned are twenty-five in
number, and deliver, on an average, ninety women a week, or about three
hundred and eighty a month. None of these women had a case of puerperal
fever. "Yet all this time this woman was crossing the other midwives in
every direction, scores of the patients of the charity being delivered
by them in the very same quarters where her cases of fever were
happening."

Mr. Roberton remarks, that little more than half the women she delivered
during this month took the fever; that on some days all escaped, on
others only one or more out of three or four; a circumstance similar to
what is seen in other infectious maladies.

Dr. Blundell says, "Those who have never made the experiment can have
but a faint conception how difficult it is to obtain the exact truth
respecting any occurrence in which feelings and interests are concerned.
Omitting particulars, then, I content myself with remarking, generally,
that from more than one district I have received accounts of the
prevalence of puerperal fever in the practice of some individuals, while
its occurrence in that of others, in the same neighborhood, was not
observed. Some, as I have been told, have lost ten, twelve, or a greater
number of patients, in scarcely broken succession; like their evil
genius, the puerperal fever has seemed to stalk behind them wherever
they went. Some have deemed it prudent to retire for a time from
practice. In fine, that this fever may occur spontaneously, I admit;
that its infectious nature may be plausibly disputed, I do not deny; but
I add, considerately, that in my own family I had rather that those
I esteemed the most should be delivered, unaided, in a stable, by the
manger-side, than that they should receive the best help, in the fairest
apartment, but expo