Ignaz Semmelweis
Ignaz Semmelweis
Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865) was a Hungarian physician, remembered as “the savior of mothers,” who showed that handwashing could prevent the spread of infection in hospitals. Working in the maternity wards of the Vienna General Hospital in the 1840s, he was troubled that more mothers died of childbed fever in the clinic staffed by doctors and medical students than in the one staffed by midwives. His turning point came in 1847, after a colleague died of an infection contracted during an autopsy, when he concluded that doctors were carrying infectious material on their hands. He required handwashing with a chlorinated lime solution, and deaths in his clinic fell sharply. He published his findings in 1861. Though his ideas were not widely accepted in his lifetime, they were vindicated by the germ theory of Pasteur and Koch and the antiseptic work of Lister, and he is now honored as a pioneer of antiseptic practice.
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Pioneers of Hygiene and Germ Theory
Ignaz Semmelweis showed that handwashing by doctors sharply reduced deaths among new mothers, and Florence Nightingale improved survival in military hospitals through sanitation and careful statistics. Louis Pasteur demonstrated that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease, Joseph Lister applied his findings to introduce antiseptic surgery, and Robert Koch identified the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis and cholera.
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