Ignaz Semmelweis

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How the Past Changed the Future

Cassandra Click

PU120-2 Unit-9 Final

January 8, 2014

Introduction

Ignaz Semmelweis (also known as “savior of mothers” and “father of infection control”) was born in Budapest on July 1, 1818. Semmelweis was educated at the universities of Pest and Vienna and in 1844 received his doctor’s degree. Following this Semmelweis became an assistant at an obstetric clinic in Vienna. This is where Semmelweis used his epidemiologic knowledge to observe, investigate, record and remedy an infectious disease that was occurring with childbirth called puerperal fever or better known as (child-bed fever). Thus his work encompassed the core discipline of public health of epidemiology. (Zoltan, n.d.).

Hand Washing & Infection Control

While Dr. Ignaz was the first assistant to the professor of Obstetrics he identified how puerperal sepsis was being transmitted. The clinic that Semmelweis worked in was divided into two clinics. On one side doctors and medical students were being taught and post mortem examinations were being carried out and on the other side were the midwives and patients. Between the years of 1840 through 1846, the maternal mortality rate in the first clinic was 98.4 per 1000 deaths while the rate of the second clinic was only 36.2 per 1000 births (Loudon, 2013). Semmelweis puzzled over this and after a fellow colleague who was a pathologist died after pricking his finger not long after doing an autopsy, Semmelweis began to understand what was happening. Ignaz concluded that the students were performing autopsies and then moving on to the labor ward taking along with them “cadaver particles” thus infecting the patients within the labor ward (Ellis, 2008).

Time for Change

In 1847 shortly after making the connection, Semmelweis developed a hypothesis and began putting his theory to the test initiating the requirement that the students and physicians must wash their hands in chloride of lime as well...