The tragedy of puerperal fever*

Puerperal Fever

Puerperal Fever

commend curetting in acute cases, an operation which is practically condemned by all modern writers. No mention is made of any other operative treatment such as pelvic drainage, hysterectomy, ligature of pelvic veins, removal of tubes or ovaries, etc., all of which may have to be considered under certain conditions, nor does he seem to be aware that the treatment of puerperal septicaemia by mea...

The tragedy of childbed fever

contamination and perhaps towards women. Plague and leprosy also increased fears of contamination and contagion, and encouraged the association of bodily affliction with moral corruption, although the link between leprosy and "sexual depravity" was not as "inextricable" as the authors assert. But there were many other reasons for changing attitudes towards deviance, sin and the body, and for ne...

the tragedy of modern man in arthur millers world

what miller wants is a theatre of heightened consciousness. he speaks of two passions in a man, the passion to "feel" and the passion "know". he belives that we can have more of the latter. he says: drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us know more and not merely to spend our feelings. the writing of the crucible shows us that he is trying to give more heightene...

The lesser pestilence: non-epidemic puerperal fever.

Puerperal fever was first described by Hippocrates.1 However, the epidemic form of the disease does not seem to have existed before the mid-seventeenth century, when "an unknown affection occurred at Leipzig in 1652 and returned again in 1665. It attacked puerperal women and was so deadly that but one in ten escaped".2 Sporadic outbreaks were recorded over the following century3 until the winte...