Ignaz Semmelweis: Preventing Childbirth Fever

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Ignaz Semmelweis was a doctor who found a way to prevent childbirth fever. What childbirth fever is, is the mothers in maternity wards were dying after giving birth. He found two reasons that could be why. First, two wards were having the mothers give birth in two different ways. One way was having them give birth on her back. The second way was having the mother's birth on their sides. He tried having the mother’s birth on both sides. But, there was no effect on what way they give birth. After the mothers died, he noticed a priest walking through the halls and ringing a bell. He thought that it could have scared some of the mothers and make them die. He stopped the priest from going throughout the halls and ringing the bell. That also had no effect. He found out that between the doctors’ ward and the …show more content…

He also thought that when they didn’t wash their hands during a delivery, that the small corpse pieces would get inside the mother and would develop the disease there. He ordered the students to wash their hands with a mixture of chlorine and other chemicals. He thought that Chlorine would work the best because it was the best way to get rid of any smells, he didn’t know anything about germs. When he told his students to wash their hands with this mixture, the rate of childbed fever deaths dropped dramatically. Once he found out that it dropped the deaths, he told the public first. That made the doctors’ upset because it made it look like the doctors are giving the women childbed fever. Semmelweis lost his job because of this and the doctors gave up the chlorine hand washing, once they gave it up the deaths of childbed fever went back up. He tried to convince doctors in other parts of the world but nobody listened to him because they thought he was crazy. Later in his life he got ill. Then he went into a mental asylum at the age of 47. He died only two weeks

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