The shocking story of how simply washing hands could have saved countless women's lives—and why doctors refused to do it.

Meet Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician working in Vienna in the 1840s who made a disturbing observation: women were dying at alarming rates after childbirth in doctor-run maternity wards, while those assisted by midwives usually survived. The difference? Doctors were performing autopsies before delivering babies—without washing their hands in between.

When Semmelweis implemented a mandatory hand-washing protocol using chlorinated lime solution in 1847, the results were immediate and dramatic. Mortality rates plummeted from over 18% to near zero within months. Yet instead of celebration, his discovery met with ridicule and hostility from the medical establishment. Many physicians were offended at the suggestion they should wash their hands between procedures, considering it an affront to their status as gentlemen.

The tragic irony of Semmelweis's story is that after years of fighting for acceptance, his mental health deteriorated. In 1865, colleagues tricked him into visiting an asylum where he was forcibly detained. During a struggle with guards, he sustained injuries that became infected, and he died—from the very type of preventable infection he had spent his life fighting—at just 47 years old. His hand-washing practices were largely abandoned, and mortality rates immediately increased sixfold.

Decades would pass before Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister established germ theory, vindicating Semmelweis's work too late for him to witness. Join us as we explore this heartbreaking medical saga that reminds us how institutional resistance to change can cost countless lives, and how scientific progress sometimes comes at great personal sacrifice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

https://www/pbs.org/newshour/health/ignaz-semmelweis-doctor-prescribed-hand-washing

By - Dr. Howard Markel

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