The Sad Life of Ignaz Semmelweis

Ignaz Semmelweis’ life paints a portrait of those who make profound discoveries which are deem unscientific by the contemporary medical and scientific communities. Despite his successes in reducing mortality of puerperal fever, aka childbed fever, his ideas were rejected by most scientists and physicians at the time. His attempts and failure to convince doctors of the importance of sanitizing their hands and instruments led to his increasing erratic behavior, thus reinforcing the belief of his critics that he was crazy. And there is more to the story that is even sadder. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to consider whether something similar could still happen today.

Semmelweis was severely troubled that his First Clinic had a much higher mortality rate due to puerperal fever than the Second Clinic. It “made me so miserable that life seemed worthless”. The two clinics used almost the same techniques, and Semmelweis started a meticulous process of eliminating all possible differences, including even religious practices…

He concluded that he and the medical students carried “cadaverous particles” on their hands from the autopsy room to the patients they examined… He instituted a policy of using a solution of [calcium hypochlorite] for washing hands between autopsy work and the examination of patients…

The mortality rate in April 1847 was 18.3%. After hand washing was instituted in mid-May, the rates in June were 2.2%, July 1.2%, August 1.9% and, for the first time since the introduction of anatomical orientation, the death rate was zero in two months in the year following this discovery…

Semmelweis’s groundbreaking idea was contrary to all established medical understanding. As a result, his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Other more subtle factors may also have played a role. Some doctors, for instance, were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands, feeling that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean…

During 1848, Semmelweis widened the scope of his washing protocol, to include all instruments coming in contact with patients in labour, and used mortality rates time series to document his success in virtually eliminating puerperal fever from the hospital ward…

After a number of unfavorable foreign reviews of his 1861 book [The Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever], Semmelweis lashed out against his critics in a series of Open Letters… They were full of bitterness, desperation, and fury and were “highly polemical and superlatively offensive” at times denouncing his critics as irresponsible murderers or ignoramuses.

In 1865 János Balassa wrote a document referring Semmelweis to a mental institution. On July 30 Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra lured him… to a Viennese insane asylum… Semmelweis surmised what was happening and tried to leave. He was severely beaten by several guards, secured in a straitjacket and confined to a darkened cell… He died after two weeks, on August 13, 1865, aged 47, from a gangrenous wound, possibly caused by the beating.

Excerpted from Ignaz Semmelweis – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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