Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis

author

Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis

1818–1865

A Hungarian doctor whose simple insistence on handwashing helped save countless mothers, he became one of medicine's most important early reformers. His story is both inspiring and heartbreaking: a breakthrough recognized too late.

1 Audiobook

Zwei offene Briefe an Dr. J. Spaeth, Professor der Geburtshilfe an der k. k. Josefs-Akademie in Wien, und an Hofrath Dr. F. W. Scanzoni, Professor der Geburtshilfe zu Würzburg

Zwei offene Briefe an Dr. J. Spaeth, Professor der Geburtshilfe an der k. k. Josefs-Akademie in Wien, und an Hofrath Dr. F. W. Scanzoni, Professor der Geburtshilfe zu Würzburg

by Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis

About the author

Born in Buda in 1818, Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis studied medicine in Vienna and went on to work in obstetrics at the Vienna General Hospital. There he confronted the deadly problem of childbed fever, which was killing many women after childbirth.

Semmelweis noticed that mortality was far higher in the clinic staffed by doctors and medical students than in the one run by midwives. After linking the deaths to contamination carried from autopsies to the maternity ward, he introduced handwashing with a chlorinated lime solution. The death rate dropped dramatically, making him an early pioneer of antiseptic practice.

Even with those results, many of his contemporaries resisted his ideas, and he struggled to win broad acceptance in his lifetime. He later worked in Budapest and published his findings, but died in 1865 at only 47. Today he is widely honored as the “savior of mothers” for helping transform the safety of childbirth.