 Unfortunately, in an era before antibiotics surgery resulted in a very high rate of postoperative morbidity and mortality, largely from postoperative infection.Among his patients at this time was Margaret Fisher, daughter of wealthy and famed Yale economist Irving Fisher, who believed in the hygienic movement of the period.Diagnosed by physicians in Bloomingdale Asylum as schizophrenic, which was before the modern development of some pharmaceutical agents, Fisher had his daughter transferred to Trenton.