Semmelweis and the Prevention of Puerperal Fever

In 1847 Ignaz Semmelweis, working in the First Obstetrical Clinic of the Vienna General Hospital, showed that childbed fever could be sharply reduced if doctors and students disinfected their hands before examining women in labour. He had noticed that the ward staffed by doctors, who came from the autopsy room, had about three times the mortality of the ward staffed by midwives, and that a colleague who died after a scalpel cut showed the same illness. He ordered hand washing with a chlorinated lime solution, and maternal deaths in his clinic fell from roughly eighteen percent to under two percent. He gave no theoretical explanation, since germs were not yet accepted as the cause, and many physicians rejected or mocked the idea. He published his book on the subject in 1861. Acceptance came only after Pasteur and Lister had established germ theory and antisepsis. The entry records what was found and disputed, and is not medical advice.