The Tragedy of Ignaz Semmelweis In 1847, Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis made a horrifying discovery at Vienna General Hospital: doctors were killing their patients. The maternity ward run by physicians had a mortality rate of 10-35% from “childbed fever,” while the midwife-run ward had only 4%. The difference? Doctors performed autopsies in the morning, then delivered babies without washing their hands. When his friend died from an infection after a scalpel accident during an autopsy—with

Ignaz Semmelweis - The Persecuted Medical Pioneer airs this Sunday at 8:25am on channel 9GEM across Australia. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor, now known as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. Described as the "saviour of mothers", Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal, or childbed fever, could be drastically cut if doctors washed their hands before delivering babies in maternity wards. However, he was ridiculed and persecuted for his discovery and died an