Frederic P Miller

Ignaz Semmelweis Frederic P Miller

Publisher Marketing: Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (July 1, 1818 - August 13, 1865; also Ignac Semmelweis, born Semmelweis Ignac Fulop), was a Hungarian physician described as the "savior of mothers," who discovered by 1847 that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by use of hand washing standards in obstetrical clinics. Puerperal fever (or childbed fever) was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal, with mortality at 10%-35%. Semmelweis postulated the theory of washing with "chlorinated lime solutions" in 1847 as head of Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctor wards had 3 times the mortality of midwife wards. In 1851, Semmelweis moved to work in Hungary, which accepted the theory by 1857. Despite his publications by 1861 of statistical/clinical trials where hand-washing reduced mortality below 1%, Semmelweis' practice only earned widespread acceptance years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory. In 1865, a nervous breakdown (or possibly Alzheimer's) landed him in an asylum, where Semmelweis died of injuries, at age 47.