Introductory Notes on Lying-In Institutions

The greatest postnatal killer of the nineteenth century was puerperal fever. A vicious and usually fatal form of septicaemia, puerperal or childbed fever was known to occur in maternity hospitals far more frequently than at home births, and to spread faster in crowded wards than in those with fewer patients. Its cause was unknown. In this precise statistical analysis of the facts, gathered from se...