Semmelweis is considered to be one of the first physicians to have identified that puerperal fever and mortality (women dying of septicemia after childbirth) was due to an infectious agent and that it could be prevented by hygienic measures. He carried out a case control study observing that women whose babies were delivered by a doctor after he had carried out an autopsy (with no hand washing etc) had a much higher mortality rate than those delivered by midwives who were not involved in carrying out autopsies and therefore exposed to possible infectious agents. This was in 1847.
His findings were not published in a journal until 1861. He stated that he had used “chlorina liquida” in May 1847 but then he used the less expensive “chlorinated lime”. This resulted in of the 1,841 maternity patients cared for only 56 died (3.04 per cent).
Semmelweis’s views were criticized by such names as Virchow (1821-1902). It was not until the experiments and demonstrations of Louis Pasteur (1822-1896) and the postulates developed by Robert Koch (1843-1910) was medical thinking able to formulate a theoretical concept of the pathogens and infections agents that could be responsible for causing diseases. Joseph Lister (1827-1912) from Scotland introduced carbolic acid solutions for irrigating wounds in August 1865.
By this time Semmelweis was dying in Vienna either of sepsis or perhaps from tertiary syphilis. Lister said at a Congress in Budapest in 1894 “Without Semmelweis my work would be in vain. New surgery owes most to the great son of Hungary”
The museum to-day has some marvelous old instruments and apparatus on display. I am glad I found it!
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