Who was Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis?

He was also called the “savior of mothers”. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (born July 1, 1818) was a Hungarian gynecologist and discoverer of the cause of puerperal fever. This infection, accompanied by high fever (puerperal sepsis), took the lives of women in childbirth on an almost epidemic scale and was also known as “death of women at the hands of men”.

New hygiene measure in medicine

Semmelweis was an assistant physician at Vienna’s first obstetrics clinic, which consisted of two departments, in 1846-49. One was under the care of physicians and medical students, and midwives were responsible for the other. It was striking that there were seriously more deaths in the department of doctors and students than in the second, the realm of midwives. The reason for this was that after autopsies had been performed, the doctors and students came directly to examine the young mothers.

Ignaz Semmelweis recognized the fatal and causal connection between unclean hands (e.g. touch infection by “corpse poison”) and sick women in childbed. He introduced hand disinfection with chlorinated lime as a hygienic measure. Although Semmelweis was able to sensationally reduce the mortality rate in his department as a result, he earned not recognition but open hostility from his colleagues.

Posthumous recognition

Ignaz Semmelweis can be called the pioneer of modern antisepsis. Unfortunately, he did not live to see his late fame and recognition. His life ended tragically. In 1865, at only 47 years of age, he died in an insane asylum near Vienna of blood poisoning contracted during an operation. His scientific findings in the field of surgical disinfection have saved the lives of generations of people to this day.