Preliminary judgment of infectivity of puerperal fever

Holmes noticed a pattern: when a patient dies of childbed fever,a doctor performs an autopsy.If the doctor then treats a new patient,that patient often comes down with the fever.Based on this correlation between autopsies of fever victims and new fever patients,he proposes a possible cause.Since there’s no evidence that the autopsy causes the fever beyond this correlation,he doesn’t jump to the conclusion that autopsy causes fever.