"Ignaz Semmelweis Saved Lives: Wash Your Hands"
by Dr. Howard Markel
On this date in 1850, a prickly Hungarian obstetrician named Ignaz Semmelweis stepped up to the podium of the Vienna Medical Society’s lecture hall. It was a grand and ornately decorated room where some of medicine’s greatest discoveries were first announced. The evening of May 15 would hardly be different — even if those present (and many more who merely read about it) did not acknowledge Semmelweis’s marvelous discovery for several decades.
A photo shows soapy hands being washed in a sink.
Source: mast3r. Shutterstock
What, exactly, was the doctor’s advice to his colleagues on that long ago night? It could be summed up in three little words: wash your hands!
At this late date, we all expect our doctors to wash their hands before examining us or performing an operation in order to prevent the spread of infection. Surprisingly, physicians did not begin to acknowledge the lifesaving power of this simple act until 1847.
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"1847: Wash Your Hands"
by Marguerite Vigliani, MD; Gale Eaton
Ignatz Semmelweis was appalled. The Vienna hospital where he worked was world famous for its obstetrics department,1
but women would rather give birth outside on the street. It was safer.2
Inside, more of them died of childbed fever, especially if they were put in First Clinic. The two maternity wards or clinics accepted patients on alternate days, but whenever their babies arrived, mothers begged to be put in Second Clinic. The death rate there was lower.3
Childbed (or puerperal) fever was a bacterial infection common in nineteenth-century hospitals and even after doctor-assisted home births. It tore through the reproductive systems and blood streams of women exhausted by childbirth. In America, oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. announced in 1843 that the disease was carried on the unwashed hands and clothes of doctors, but he was largely ignored.4
In 1847, Semmelweis came to the same conclusion. As assistant to Professor Johann Klein, he was put in charge of First Clinic and found the patients were right about it. His ward’s 1841-1846 death rate was 9.92 percent, compared to 3.88 percent in Second Clinic.5
Was it because of miasma? No. The two clinics were under the same roof and shared an anteroom; all patients breathed the same air. Overcrowding? No. Second Clinic was more crowded. Semmelweis ruled out one hypothesis after another.6
A chart shows yearly puerperal fever mortality rates from two clinics.
Women admitted to the Vienna General Hospital’s First Clinic, where babies were delivered by medical students, were more likely to die in childbed than women in the Second Clinic, staffed by midwives—but why?
Source: From 'A Story of Medicine in 50 Discoveries', by Marguerite Vigliani, MD and Gale Eaton (Tilbury House, 2015)
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Question
Use the passages to answer the question.
Which of the following details from the first text is clarified further in the second text?
(1 point)
Responses
Medicine and surgery were considered to be the premier specialties in Vienna
Medicine and surgery were considered to be the premier specialties in Vienna
His plea was far more than aesthetic; it was a matter of life and death and helped to prevent a deadly malady known as “childbed” or puerperal (from the Latin words for child and parent) fever
His plea was far more than aesthetic; it was a matter of life and death and helped to prevent a deadly malady known as “childbed” or puerperal (from the Latin words for child and parent) fever
Dr. Semmelweis was brilliant but had two strikes against him when applying for a position at the Vienna General Hospital in 1846: he was Hungarian and Jewish
Dr. Semmelweis was brilliant but had two strikes against him when applying for a position at the Vienna General Hospital in 1846: he was Hungarian and Jewish
The hospital ward run by midwives, without autopsy duties, had far better outcomes with their deliveries.
1 answer