Puerperal fever, the streptococcus, and the sulphonamides, 1911-1945.

Host-pathogen interactions in Streptococcus pyogenes infections, with special reference to puerperal fever and a comment on vaccine development.

Streptococcus pyogenes (group A streptococcus) causes a variety of diseases, including acute pharyngitis, impetigo, rheumatic fever and the streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. Moreover, S. pyogenes was responsible for the classical example of a nosocomial infection, the epidemics of puerperal fever (childbed fever) that caused the death of numerous women in earlier centuries. The most extensive...

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...

A Study of the Bactericidal Power of the Blood during Pregnancy and the Puerperium, and Its Relationship to the Development and Course of Puerperal Infection

of Burt-White and Armstrong,1 however, would appear to call into question the validity of the conclusions offered by previous observers. Burt-White and Armstrong examined the cervical flora in 5 5 pregnant women ; in 40 per cent, of these cases streptococci of different types were isolated, but in only one did the strain present the characters of the streptococcus pyogenes, the common cause of ...

Fulminant Puerperal Sepsis caused by Hemolytic Group A Streptococci and Toxic Shock Syndrome - A Case Report and Review of the Literature.

Most physicians would consider puerperal sepsis, known colloquially as childbed fever, to be a relic of the past which has long since been overcome with the introduction of Semmelweisʼ hygiene measures in general practice. Puerperal fever does not feature in the ordinary experience of most people. But puerperal sepsis caused by Group A Streptococci (Streptococcus pyogenes) may take a highly dra...

Sulphonamides in Urine