The doctor once caused an epidemic.

Author: [US] Sherwin B. Nuland
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: It has been proven that the setup of obstetric units is a double-edged sword. The outbreak of puerperal fever in the H?tel-Dieu de Paris once again provided proof that such facilities must face the outbreak of puerperal fever. In February 1746, 20 maternal patients contracted puerperal fever, and not a single person survived. Until 1781, this disease broke out every winter (in fact, the H?tel-Dieu had experienced an outbreak of this disease as early as 1664, but there were no good records. The number of deaths this time is unknown, and the cause is said to have been toxic gas produced by a male patient in a ward downstairs). In 1790, in a newspaper, Joseph Clarke, the director of the Obstetric Hospital in Dublin (also known as the Circular Hospital due to its circular building), reported: "Even in the cold season, the disease still prevails." In 1767, the Circular Hospital, which had been in operation for 10 years, encountered the th outbreak of a series of epidemics, which lasted until 1788. In fact, between 1764 and 1861, there were a total of 23 different outbreaks in this hospital, and the number of deaths in each case is not recorded. In 1770, among the 63 maternal patients who gave birth at Westminster Hospital, 19 contracted the disease, and 14 died. Around this time, hospitals across Europe successively reported the outbreak of the disease. A particularly striking report described the massive outbreak of puerperal fever at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in 1773: "Almost every woman, after giving birth or within the next 24 hours, contracted the disease, despite all possible treatments being implemented, the result was still that all died. This city had never had this disease before." This is an observation that many people who witnessed the spread of the disease in all major cities in Europe would note. The mortality rate for mothers waiting to give birth in the hospital is many times higher than that of home delivery. Even in the delivery process carried out by private midwives or obstetricians, such cases occasionally occur, but the total number is much smaller than in hospitals. Not only is the incidence of the disease lower, but the resulting deaths are also rare: when this disease occurs during home delivery, only 35% of the patients die, while in hospitals, the figure is between 80% and 90%. A comparison of mortality statistics for maternal patients between institutions that only perform home deliveries and hospitals that provide inpatient obstetric delivery reveals particularly striking examples. The result is that between 1831 and 1843, only 10 maternal patients out of 10,000 with puerperal fever died at the Royal Gynecological Charity in London, while in the maternity ward of the general hospital in the same city, 600 maternal patients out of 10,000 died. P21-22