Ignaz Semmeleweis

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Ignaz Semmeleweis and 'Childbed' fever

Ignaz Semmeleweise, a physician at the Vienna GeneraL hospital, noticed that on one particular maternity ward up the 30% of pregnant mothers died from 'childbed' fever, while in other wards the rate was at least 10% less. Mothers were begging doctors not to be place in this ward.

Ignaz Philipp Semmeleweis (1818-1865)
While performing a post mortem on a medical collegue, who had died from a cut inflicted on himself during a postmortum he had conducted, Semmeleweis found the body to contain diseased tissue similar to that of the dead pregnant mothers.

Semmeleweis knew that mothers, in the ward with the high death rate, were normally treated by students coming from the post-mortum room and conclued that the students could be carrying infection to the mothers.

He instituded a rule, against great opposition from his collegues, that after being in the post-mortum room all personell must wash their hands in carbolic and water. Whithin a month mortality rates in the letal maternity ward had fallen to a fifth of its previous rate.

Accident Ward. Guy's Hospital 1887
Favourable results were obtained when he extending his antiseptic procedures to include all instuments used in treatments.
Medical opposition to Semmeleweis's procedures grew amounst his collegues. A request for an examination of his results by a comission, was turned down and his appointment at the Hospital was not renewed.

Semmelweis contined his campain for cleanliness, against much opposition, when he moved to Budapest.

In 1861 he published his book on the prevention of childbed fever. In the book he maintained that local contamination was the main cause of blood poisoning and death from sepsis.

The opposition and disbelief he received for his methods, from the medical profession, led to his depression and anger. He died in an asylum, in 1865, from sepsis caused by a surgically infected finger, at the age of forty-seven.