Semmelweis and the Case for Handwashing

In 1846, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis began work at the Vienna General Hospital, where he faced a terrifying puzzle. The hospital had two maternity clinics, seemingly identical in every way except one: who delivered the babies. In the First Clinic, run by doctors and medical students, the death rate from childbed fever was a horrifying 11.4 percent. In the Second Clinic, run by midwives, it was just 2.7 percent. The difference was so well known that pregnant women begged on their knees not to be sent to the doctors' ward. Some even gave birth in the streets on the way to the hospital, and their infection rates were lower than those in the First Clinic. Semmelweis, an assistant to the clinic's head, was haunted by the disparity. The only significant variable was the staff.