puerperal fever
Ignaz Semmelweis, a physician at the first maternity ward of the Vienna General Hospital, was distressed to see that a large proportion of women who had given birth in that division contracted a fatal disease known as puerperal fever or postpartum fever.
An opinion attributed to puerperal fever epidemic influences, ranging from entire districts and puerperal fever occurred in women who were postpartum. Semmelweis noted that some women placed in first division who lived far from the hospital had been surprised by the pain of childbirth on their way, and had given birth in the street, however, despite these adverse conditions, the percentage of deaths from puerperal fever between cases of street delivery was lower than the first division. Another view
overcrowding. But Semmelweis argued that, in fact, the crowding was greater in the Second Division, in part by the desperate efforts of patients to prevent from entering in the famous first division.
A commission appointed to investigate the matter attributed to a common disease in the division first to the injuries caused by careless surveys.
lesions produced naturally in the birthing process were far greater than they could have a little careful consideration, the midwives who received lessons in the Second Division recognized for their patients in a very similar, but without producing the same effects. Kolletschka
friend of Semmelweis, received a puncture wound on his finger, caused by the scalpel of a student with whom he was performing an autopsy, and died after an agony during which showed the same symptoms that Semmelweis had observed in victims puerperal fever. Semmelweis realized that
cadaverous matter that the student's scalpel had introduced into the bloodstream of Kolletschka had been the cause of the fatal illness of his colleague, and the similarities between the course of the ailment of Kollerschka and women of the clinic was to Semmelweis the conclusion that his patients had died of blood poisoning of a kind: he, his colleagues and medical students were carriers of the infectious substance, because he and his team used to reach the rooms immediately after making dissections in the autopsy room, and recognized women in labor after washing their hands only in a superficial way. Semmelweis
tested this possibility, so that if the assumption were correct, then one could prevent childbed fever chemically destroying the infectious material adhering to the hands.
puerperal mortality began to decline, down to 1.27% in the first division, compared to 1.33 in the second. Later
clinical experiences led Semmelweis to extend his hypothesis. On one occasion, after disinfecting hands, looked first to a parturient suffering from ulcerated cervical cancer, then proceeded to examine a dozen other women in the same room, after a routine cleaning, not disinfected again. Eleven of the twelve patients died puerperal fever.
Semmelweis concluded that puerperal fever could be produced not only by cadaverous matter, but also putrid matter from living organisms.
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