LESSON 123
1
ly dis re able less un ness
2
occurred procedure solution arrange
resistance rejected laundry
examine weather consider
3
bacteria harmful explanation series
Semmelweis solve clue insisted
concluded dissecting childbirth contact
ridiculous patients indicated serious
4
1. diet
2. stale
3. punctured
4. frequently
5. resist
6. hostility
5
Semmelweis Solves the Problem
Semmelweis tried to figure out what caused the higher death rate in Division One of his
hospital. He rejected the explanation that fear caused the higher death rate. He
considered other explanations. One was that changes in the weather caused the
higher death rate. Semmelweis pointed out that the weather was the same for
Division One and Division Two.
Another explanation was that patients were crowded together in Division One.
Semmelweis pointed out that deaths occurred in Division One even in areas where
patients were not crowded. He also showed that high death rates did not occur in
the parts * of Division Two where patients were crowded together.1
Semmelweis considered a number of other possible explanations and rejected each of
them. The bed sheets were equally dirty in Division One and Division Two.
Semmelweis concluded that the condition of the bed sheets could not cause the
difference in the death rates. Poor diet and stale air were also rejected as causes
because both were present in both divisions.
Then something happened that gave Semmelweis a clue to the cause of the high death
rate in Division One. A doctor who worked in Division One was dissecting a dead
body when * his knife slipped and punctured his finger. Within a few days, he
came down with a fever. It was the same kind that killed so many women in the
hospital. It was called childbed fever. People had thought that the fever occurred
only after childbirth, but the doctor's illness and death proved them wrong.
Semmelweis did not know that the doctor had been infected by bacteria that cause
childbed fever (blood poisoning). But he assumed that something must have
entered the doctor's body when he dissected the infected body.2
Since childbed fever was more serious in Division One, where doctors * and students
attended patients, Semmelweis concluded that the disease must be carried by the
doctors and students, but not by the nurses in Division Two. So he began to
examine what the doctors and students did. He found that they frequently dissected
the bodies of women who had died of the fever. The nurses did not do this. The
doctors and students frequently went directly from an operating room to deliver a
baby without bothering to wash their hands. When they did wash, they used only
soap and water.3
Semmelweis took steps to cure this problem, but they were met * with a great deal of
resistance. First, he insisted that all doctors must wash their hands in a solution that
would kill the infectious material on their hands. Next, Semmelweis removed all
dirty materials from the patients' rooms. Each room was cleaned frequently, and
bed sheets were replaced when they got dirty.4
The changes that Semmelweis introduced caused a great drop in the death rate in
Division One. During the first year the new procedures were put into operation, the
death rate dropped from one out of every ten women to one out of every hundred
women—a drop of * ninety percent. During two months of that year, not one
woman died in Division One.
Semmelweis should have been treated as a hero. Instead, he was greeted with hostility.
Many respected doctors said that his procedures were ridiculous. They felt that he
had no right to tell doctors how to wash their hands.5 Semmelweis couldn't stand
the constant battles, so he left the hospital. Shortly afterward he became ill and
went to a hospital for an examination. He found out that he had infected his finger
during one of his last operations. The infection was blood poisoning (childbed
fever). Semmelweis * died of the very disease he had learned to control.
Semmelweis was a great man because he used common sense, facts, and figures. He
didn't work out a cure for blood poisoning. He didn't work out ways to kill bacteria
that had entered a wound. But he did a great deal for the field of medicine because
he showed how cleanliness can prevent the spread of harmful bacteria. The
techniques he introduced have been improved over the years, but they follow the
same basic principle: whatever comes in contact with a wound must be clean.6