PUERPERAL SEPSIS—LAPAROTOMY.Read by invitation before the Kansas City Academy of Medicine.

Abstract

For ages the cause of Puerperal Fever (which is a symptom—not a disease) was supposed to exist in the atmosphere of the lying-in hospital or chamber; it was believed that the fever was an infectious, contagious disease —that it was not necessary for actual contact to take place. The many opportunities both on the operating table and in the dead room for studying its pathology have cleared the mystery. As a result of the recognition of its septic character within the last few years, the puerperal woman has been looked upon as a wounded woman and has been treated as such; so it is now a rare occurrence for a woman to have a bad getting up after confinement because practitioners recognize the principles of aseptic surgery and apply them intelligently to the treatment of the lying-in woman. With clean hands and surgically clean instruments used by a clean physician