Which physician wrote the 1843 essay on the contagiousness of puerperal fever?

Which physician wrote the 1843 essay on the contagiousness of puerperal fever? Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. did.

Holmes published “The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever” in 1843 after reviewing medical cases involving childbed fever, a frequently fatal infection occurring during or shortly after childbirth. He argued that physicians and nurses could carry the disease from one patient to another, including through contaminated clothing, instruments, and hands.

His argument challenged prominent obstetric opinion, because germ theory had not yet been established and many physicians rejected the idea that attendants transmitted puerperal fever. Holmes recommended practical precautions, including cleaning equipment and withdrawing from obstetric practice after a case occurred. The essay initially received limited attention, partly because it appeared in a short-lived medical journal.

Holmes revised and republished the work in 1855 under the title “Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence.” Ignaz Semmelweis later reached similar conclusions in Vienna and showed that chlorine handwashing dramatically reduced deaths. Holmes’s essay is therefore remembered as an important pre-germ-theory argument for infection control.