Ignaz Semmelweis

Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865), Hungarian obstetrician, who discovered how to prevent puerperal fever from being transmitted to mothers, thus introducing antiseptic prophylaxis into medicine. Born in Buda and educated at the universities of Pest and Vienna, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis became assistant professor in the maternity ward of the Vienna General Hospital. In the 1840s puerperal, or childbed, fever, a bacterial infection of the female genital tract after childbirth, was taking the lives of up to 30 percent of the women giving birth in lying-in wards, whereas most women who gave birth at home remained relatively unaffected. Semmelweis noticed that women who were examined by student doctors who had not washed their hands after leaving the autopsy room had much higher mortality rates. When a colleague who had received a scalpel cut died from infection, Semmelweis concluded that the puerperal fever was septic and contagious. By ordering students to wash their hands with chlorinated lime before examining patients, he reduced the maternal mortality rate from 12.24 to 1.27 percent in two years.

Semmelweis nevertheless encountered strong opposition from hospital officials, and because of his political activity as well, left Vienna in 1850 for the University of Pest, where he became professor of obstetrics at the university hospital. In spite of his enforcing antiseptic practices and reducing the mortality rate from puerperal fever to 0.85 percent, Semmelweis's findings and publications were resisted by hospital and medical authorities in Hungary and abroad. After suffering a breakdown, he went to a mental hospital in Vienna, where he died from an infection contracted during an operation he had performed earlier.