Ignaz Semmelweis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (July 1, 1818 – August 13, 1865; also Ignac Semmelweis, born Semmelweis Ignác Fülöp),[1][Note 1] was a Hungarian physician described as the "savior of mothers",[2] who discovered by 1847 that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by use of hand washing standards in obstetrical clinics.[2] Puerperal fever (or childbed fever) was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal, with mortality at 10%–35%. Semmelweis postulated the theory of washing with "chlorinated lime solutions" in 1847[2] as head of Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards. In 1851, Semmelweis moved to work in Hungary, where his theory came to be accepted by 1857.
Despite his publication (by 1861) of statistical/clinical trials where hand-washing reduced mortality below 1%, Semmelweis' practice only earned widespread acceptance years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory. In 1865, a nervous breakdown (or possibly Alzheimer's) landed him in an asylum, where Semmelweis died of injuries, at age 47.
My favourite example of the fallibility of commonly accepted scientific truth. Remember this guy next time some scientist is pretending that he knows all the answers. The sad fact is that those who dissent from or challenge the prevailing orthodoxy are often dismissed because they don't fit the accepted view.
