ention of the inquirer most particularly to the
Quarterly Report above referred to, and the letters of Dr. Meigs and Dr.
Rutter, to be found in the "Medical Examiner." Whatever impression they
may produce upon his mind, I trust they will at least convince him
that there is some reason for looking into this apparently uninviting
subject.

At a meeting of the College of Physicians just mentioned, Dr. Warrington
stated, that a few days after assisting at an autopsy of puerperal
peritonitis, in which he laded out the contents of the abdominal cavity
with his hands, he was called upon to deliver three women in rapid
succession. All of these women were attacked with different forms of
what is commonly called puerperal fever. Soon after these he saw two
other patients, both on the same day, with the same disease. Of these
five patients two died.

At the same meeting, Dr. West mentioned a fact related to him by Dr.
Samuel Jackson of Northumberland. Seven females, delivered by Dr.
Jackson in rapid succession, while practising in Northumberland County,
were all attacked with puerperal fever, and five of them died. "Women,"
he said, "who had expected me to attend upon them, now becoming alarmed,
removed out of my reach, and others sent for a physician residing
several miles distant. These women, as well as those attended by
midwives; all did well; nor did we hear of any deaths in child-bed
within a radius of fifty miles, excepting two, and these I afterwards
ascertained to have been caused by other diseases." He underwent, as
he thought, a thorough purification, and still his next patient was
attacked with the disease and died. He was led to suspect that the
contagion might have been carried in the gloves which he had worn in
attendance upon the previous cases. Two months or more after this he had
two other cases. He could find nothing to account for these, unless it
were the instruments for giving enemata, which had been used in two of
the former cases, and were employed by these patients. When the
first case occurred, he was attending and dressing a limb extensively
mortified from erysipelas, and went immediately to the accouchement with
his clothes and gloves most thoroughly imbued with its efluvia. And here
I may mention, that this very Dr. Samuel Jackson of Northumberland is
one of Dr. Dewees's authorities against contagion.

The three following statements are now for the first time given to the
public. All of the cases re