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This is not an unusual fate for a pioneering scientist: languishing misunderstood of his time before dying in the dark. But 200 years after his birth, the work of a Hungarian obstetrician was born.
Decades before Louis Pasteur was widely accepted for the germ theory of the disease, Ignaz Semmelweis was struggling against his peers to accept what was today medical orthodoxy: doctors must thoroughly disinfect their hands before to treat patients.
Born on July 1, 1818, Semmelweis joined the Obstetric Department of the Vienna General Hospital in 1846 and is immediately struck by the extremely high maternal mortality rate in the wing. trainee doctors trained: it exceeded 10%, sometimes reaching almost 40%.
On the other hand, in the neighboring wing where midwives were trained, the rate remained below the contemporary average of 3%. Bernhard Kuenburg, President of the Semmelweis Foundation in Vienna, said: "This disparity has deeply troubled Semmelweis and it has undertaken a thorough epidemiological study," said Bernhard Kuenburg, president of the Semmelweis Foundation. bodies must contain invisible but potentially lethal "particles".
"At the time, medical students were going directly to an autopsy to help work without disinfecting their hands," said Kuenburg
. To solve the problem, Semmelweis imposed a more rigorous handwashing regime for five minutes with a chlorinated lime solution.
With this "very simple method," Semmelweis reduced the death rate to "almost zero," says Kuenburg.
But instead of applause, Semmelweis suffered the wrath of the great medical fraternity of Vienna and in 1849 his contract
It was only at the end of the nineteenth century that the reputation of Semmelweis began to be rehabilitated after the discoveries of Pasteur, Robert Koch and Alexander Yersin had supported his theories. Today, he is considered the father of modern theories of hospital hygiene and sterilization
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