Page:A dissertation on the puerperal fever (1789).djvu/21

 Of the two leading theories that have been advocated by physicians, the one makes it an inflammatory, the other a putrid affection. Probably, in most cases, it is primarily inflammatory, and finally putrid; but may it not easily be conceived, that a puerperal fever which, in a plethoric habit, where the vessels being turgid are less disposed to absorption, would in it's origin be highly inflammatory, might in a thinner habit, where the irritability is great, assume from the very beginning, a putrid type?

I have been informed of an instance, in this Commonwealth, of two ingenious practitioners of eminence widely differing in sentiment on this disease, tenaciously supporting their opinions upon fact and experience, and yet supporting them in direct opposition to each other. Might not both of them be in the right, and even the method of cure adopted by each of them be perfectly justifiable, though the one recommended an antiseptic, and the other an antiphlogistic course? They both practised according to the obvious symptoms of the malady; the one, under appearances actually putrid, prescribed antiseptics; the other, under those that were inflammatory, prescribed antiphlogistics.

The many causes of absorption indeed should render us cautious of phlebotomy; but I conceive, it may sometimes be indicated.

It may, perhaps, be objected to what I have advanced, that if my theory is right, there is nothing specific in the puerperal fever.—

To this I answer—That from the irritable state of the Rh