Alexander Gordon (physician)

Alexander Gordon MA, MD (20 May 1752 – 19 October 1799) was a Scottish obstetrician best known for clearly demonstrating the contagious nature of puerperal sepsis (childbirth fever).

[1][2] On the basis of these conclusions, he advised that the spread could be limited by fumigation of the clothing and burning of the bed linen used by women with the condition and by cleanliness of her medical and midwife attendants.

[3] His paper gave insights into the contagious nature of puerperal sepsis around half a century before the better-known publications of Ignaz Semmelweis and Oliver Wendell Holmes and some eighty years before the role of bacteria as infecting agents was clearly understood.

[6] His father, also Alexander Gordon, was a tenant farmer at Milton of Drum,[7] some nine miles to the west of Aberdeen city centre.

[6] Alexander's twin brother James achieved a degree of local fame for his role in developing the swede, which would go on to become a staple of the Scottish diet.

He speculated that the disease was transmitted by "putrid particles" explaining that "after delivery infectious matter is readily and copiously admitted by the numerous patulous orifices [of the birth canal] which are open to imbibe it.

He concluded that "the cause was obvious, for the infectious matter which produces erysipelas was at the time readily absorbed by the lymphatics which were open to receive it.

The midwives he wrote "raised an odium against my practice..." He had realised the risks involved in divulging the names, writing "I saw the danger of disclosing the fatal secret."

As the midwives and women of Aberdeen turned against him, he bitterly described "the ungenerous treatment which I met with from that very sex whose sufferings I was at so much pains to relieve.

[15] Gordon's textbook of medicine was written between 1786 and 1795 and remained in possession of his family until 1913, when it was donated to the Library of Aberdeen University.

[5] His advocacy of the need for a humane and caring attitude towards patients was clearly influenced by John Gregory, Professor of the Practice of Physic at the University of Edinburgh and one of the originators of secular concepts of medical ethics.