t, namely, capable
of being propagated by contagion, and is a physician who has been in
attendance upon a case of the disease warranted in continuing, without
interruption, his practice as an obstetrician? Dr. C., although not
a believer in the contagious character of many of those affections
generally supposed to be propagated in this manner, has nevertheless
become convinced by the facts that have fallen under his notice, that
the puerperal fever now prevailing is capable of being communicated by
contagion. How otherwise can be explained the very curious circumstance
of the disease in one district being exclusively confined to the
practice of a single physician, a Fellow of this College, extensively
engaged in obstetrical practice,--while no instance of the disease
has occurred in the patients under the care of any other accoucheur
practising within the same district; scarcely a female that has been
delivered for weeks past has escaped an attack?"

Dr. Rutter, the practitioner referred to, "observed that, after the
occurrence of a number of cases of the disease in his practice, he
had left the city and remained absent for a week, but on returning, no
article of clothing he then wore having been used by him before, one
of the very first cases of parturition he attended was followed by
an attack of the fever, and terminated fatally; he cannot, readily,
therefore, believe in the transmission of the disease from female to
female, in the person or clothes of the physician."

The meeting at which these remarks were made was held on the 3d of May,
1842. In a letter dated December 20, 1842, addressed to Dr. Meigs, and
to be found in the "Medical Examiner," he speaks of "those horrible
cases of puerperal fever, some of which you did me the favor to see with
me during the past summer," and talks of his experience in the disease,
"now numbering nearly seventy cases, all of which have occurred within
less than a twelvemonth past."

And Dr. Meigs asserts, on the same page, "Indeed, I believe that his
practice in that department of the profession was greater than that
of any other gentleman, which was probably the cause of his seeing a
greater number of the cases." This from a professor of midwifery, who
some time ago assured a gentleman whom he met in consultation, that the
night on which they met was the eighteenth in succession that he himself
had been summoned from his repose, seems hardly satisfactory.

I must call the att