In the account of medical specialty , there is one fib that is a fantastic example of how observation and experimentation can result to pregnant change and discoveries . The same story , however , is also an utmost example of how some scientific idea can nevertheless be dismissed in favor of tradition .
During the 1840s , at the Vienna General Hospital ’s maternity clinic , the largest in the humans at the fourth dimension , a unusual and perplexing phenomenon was taking place . The maternity clinic was separate into two Aaron Montgomery Ward : if you were a pregnant cleaning woman admitted to Ward One , there was a 29 percent chance that you would die during your stay , but if you were admitted to Ward Two , you only had a 3 percentage chance of die . So , what was hold up on here ?
During the 18th and nineteenth C , childbed febrility , orpuerperal pyrexia , was an infection contracted during or after childbirth and was a common grounds of dying in infirmary with maternity Aaron Montgomery Ward . The disease be given to affect women within the first three days after commit nativity and had a speedy progression , lead to abdominal pain , feverishness , debility , and , more often than not , death .
For present-day physicians , the disease was a mystery . For one affair , seed theoryof disease had not been constitute , so people had no concept that bacteria could be a campaign of contagion . This made it difficult to compass how epidemic childbed feverishness was being spread out to different patient role .
go into Ignaz Semmelweis , an adjunct doc at the Vienna General Hospital . Semmelweis observed the unusual , odd number of deaths take place between Wards One and Two and concluded that the only difference was that the former was managed by aesculapian students and the latter by trainee midwife . for examine his observation , Semmelweis allegedly had the two wardsswap staffand he found that , much like Angel of decease , the high mortality rates followed the medical students .
Another piece of the puzzle come when Jakob Kolletschka , a prof of forensic medicine , die after a scholar accidentally cut his fingerbreadth during an postmortem . Semmelweis noted that the sepsis that had kill Kolletschka leave standardised pathologic mark in the body to the women who died of childbed febrility .
“ sidereal day and night I was obsess by the epitome of Kolletschka ’s disease ” , Semmelweisrecorded , “ and was forced to recognize , ever more decisively , that the disease from which Kolletschka cash in one’s chips was indistinguishable to that from which so many maternity patients died . ”
Semmelweis believed that , as the medical bookman would go directly from do postmortem , often with the same dress and dirty instruments , they were somehow passing infective matter to the pregnant charwoman with their hands . In May 1847 , Semmelweis institutionalized a insurance policy where all staff had to wash out their hand with chlorinated piddle before assist to their patients . The fatality rate rates plummeted in both wards .
Yet , while it would be tempting to regard this as a prize case of the scientific method in practice , the story is not that straightforward . Unfortunately , Semmelweis ’s estimation were challenged by his colleagues who believed the deaths were make by miasm – risky air that was enter the wards through the respiration system . Out of defeat , Semmelweis submit his position in Vienna and move to Budapest where he became the principal of obstetrics at St Rochus Hospital . Once in his post , Semmelweis teach his new colleagues the chastity of wash hands and instrument , which had the same outcome for fatality rate rates .
He later published a rule book in 1861 explain his views on childbed fever , but it wasnot well received . Semmelweis soon fall into reconditeness and became embittered against the medical community which doubted him . He became more and more fluid and was eventually impel into an asylum where he lingered until he died at the old age of 47 .
Semmelweis ’s account is an instructive example of how some scientific ideas and discoveries can still be passed over due to establish traditions . However , Semmelweis is also an active histrion in this narrative of rejection . He was known to be arrogant and hard , often being openly insulting to his confrere and opponents .
Nevertheless , his work eventually received greater appreciation afterRobert KochandLouis Pasteurproduced their research into bacterium as causal agents of disease . Though even then , the much - acclaim " bacteriologic revolution"took some time to convert everyone .
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