Improving hygiene

In the early 1800s, death during childbirth—called child bed fever or puerperal sepsis—was quite common. Ignaz Semmelweis, a young doctor who ran the maternity ward of a hospital in Vienna, wondered why the death rate of mothers was as high as 20%—four times higher than in the ward where midwives looked after expectant mothers. Later he noticed that a fellow doctor had died from puerperal sepsis after cutting himself during an autopsy of a victim of child bed fever. This led him to speculate that a disease-causing agent might inadvertently be carried from the autopsy rooms to the birthing rooms, infecting mothers and causing the higher rates of child bed fever. Based on this conjecture, he insisted that doctors wash their hands and change their contaminated clothing after autopsies. Death rates dramatically dropped. Unfortunately, his fellow physicians resented the new rules and the implicit suggestion that they were spreading the disease. Dr. Semmelweis was soon fired. His innovations in hygiene were never fully appreciated during his lifetime, and he died a dejected man in an insane asylum. Gradually, his hygienic principles became standard practice in hospitals, together with those of English surge....³