Historical Mortality Rates Of Puerperal Fever
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis worked at the Vienna General Hospital's maternity clinic on a 3-year contract from 1846-1849. There, as elsewhere in European and North American hospitals, puerperal fever, or childbed fever, was rampant, sometimes climbing to 40 percent of admitted patients. He was disturbed by these mortality rates, and eventually developed a theory of infection, in which he theorized that decaying matter on the hands of doctors, who had recently conducted autopsies, was brought into contact with the genitals of birthgiving women during the medical examinations at the maternity clinic. He proposed a radical hand washing theory using chlorinated lime, now a known disinfectant.
At the time however, the germ theory of infection had not been developed and Semmelweis' ideas ran contrary to key medical beliefs and practices. His ideas were rejected and ridiculed. Quite unusually, his contract was not renewed, effectively expelling him from the medical community in Vienna. He died as an outcast in a mental institution.
Read more about Historical Mortality Rates Of Puerperal Fever: Puerperal Fever - A Modern Disease, Yearly Patient Mortality Rates At The Dublin Maternity Hospital 1784-1849, Contamination of Midwives' Hands
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