Ignaz Semmelweis, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Ignaz Semmelweis

Austrian doctor

Date of Birth: 01-Jul-1818

Place of Birth: Buda, Budapest, Hungary

Date of Death: 13-Aug-1865

Profession: physician, university teacher, botanist, gynaecologist, obstetrician

Nationality: Hungary

Zodiac Sign: Cancer


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About Ignaz Semmelweis

  • Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (German: [?'gna?ts 'z?ml?va?s]; Hungarian: Semmelweis Ignác Fülöp; 1 July 1818 – 13 August 1865) was a Hungarian physician and scientist, now known as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures.
  • Described as the "saviour of mothers", Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as "childbed fever") could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics.
  • Puerperal fever was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal.
  • Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards.
  • He published a book of his findings in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever. Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community.
  • Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it.
  • In 1865, Semmelweis supposedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was treacherously committed to an asylum by his colleague, where he died, a mere 14 days later, at the age of 47, after being beaten by the guards, from a gangrenous wound, due to an infection on his right hand which might have been caused by the beating (officially of pyaemia).
  • Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory, and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist's research, practised and operated, using hygienic methods, with great success.

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