Great discoveries in medicine.

Semmelweis Ignaz Philipp –

Saviour of Mothers

Baranovskaya E.I.
 Ignaz Semmelweis and Aseptic Obstetrics
Until the mid-19th century,
prevention of sepsis (generalized
infection) was not known.
Ignáz Semmelweis, the first in
the world to explain this,
developed a method and
introduced it into medical
practice. 
He has demonstrated in an
obstetric department that
maternal fever with an
extremely high mortality has
been preventable.
 Semmelweis Ignaz Philipp
Semmelweis I. was born on
1818 in Buda (north bank of the • Teréz Müller and József
Danube-Дунай) in Hungary. He Semmelweis, the
was the fifth of eight children in a
parents of Ignaz
family. His father was a grocer.
He educated at the Catholic Semmelweis
Gymnasium. After that, he
entered the University of Vienna
and graduated from the medical
faculty. He receive the degrees of
Doctor of Medicine and Master of
Obstetrics. He was 26.
 Maternal mortality from puerperal fever
In 1846, Semmelweis was appointed first assistant to the
Professor of Obstetrics Johann Klein (1788–1856) in the First
Obstetrical Clinic of the General Hospital in Vienna. At the time,
the maternal mortality from puerperal fever had reached
epidemic proportions.  

Puerperal fever mortality rates for the First and Second Clinics at the
Vienna General Hospital 1841–1846.
 Training students in the clinic
• Semmelweis had through clinical
and post-mortem observations
and epidemiological studies, • Томас Каупертуэйт
identified the cause of the
problem.
Эйкинс.
• The First Clinic was the teaching • Клиника Гросса, 1875
service for medical students, and
the Second Clinic had been
selected for the instruction of
midwives only. Students along
with doctors participated in the
study of the corpses of those who
died from postpartum fever.
Semmelweiss associated work
with corpses with postpartum
fever.
Picture. T.K. Akins.
Gross Clinic, 1875
 The main idea is hand processing
• Semmelweis concluded that doctors and medical students
carried "cadaverous particles" on their hands from the
autopsy room to the patients.
• He ordered the use of calcium hypochlorite solution for
washing hands between autopsy and examination of patients.

• Puerperal fever
mortality rates drop
markedly when
Semmelweis
implemented
chlorine hand
washing
Publications of Ignaz Semmelweis

Article “Maternal Fever

Pathology”.

«Medical weekly»
January 10, 1858
• Semmelweis Handwash
Instructions, 1861
 Medical community
• His ideas received the famous doctors. But head of
the clinic professor Klein was in contra and he
declined to reappoint Semmelweis.
• As a result, his ideas were rejected by the medical
community.
• Beginning in 1861, Semmelweis suffered from
severe depression. He turned every conversation to
the topic of childbed fever.
• Semmelweiss was severely criticized and he himself
violently attacked his opponents.
 Publication priority
• Semmelweis IP. Die aetiologie, der begriff,
und die prophylaxis des kindbettfiebers (The
etiology, concept and prophylaxis of childbed
fever). Pest, Wien u Leipzig, CA
Hartleben 1861.

• Pasteur L. Septicémie puérperale. Bull Acad

Méd Paris 1879;8:271–4.
Tragic decease
• Semmelweiss died in
1865 in a psychiatric
clinic from sepsis.
• In 1969, the University
of Budapest was named
after Semmelweiss.

• A bronze statue of
Semmelweis near the
university.
 Several Semmelweis documents have become part of
the World Heritage List (Список всемирного наследия)
Offener Brief an sämtliche Professoren der The etiology, concept and prophylaxis of
Geburtshilfe (1862) childbed fever (1861)

•  
 Memory

• Austrian
commemorative coin
of 2008 with the
image of Semmelweis
(gold coin of 50
euros)

Ignác Semmelweis Memorial Wall

Saviour of Mothers
Statue of Ignaz
Philipp Semmelweis
in front of Hospital of
St. Roch,
Budapest, Hungary.

Installed in 1904,
work of Alajos Strobl