The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis

Surgeon, scholar, best-selling author, Sherwin B. Nuland tells the strange story of Ign#xC3;#xA1;c Semmelweis with urgency and the insight gained from his own studies and clinical experience. Ign#xC3;#xA1;c Semmelweis is remembered for the now-commonplace notion that doctors must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-nineteenth-century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea. With deaths from childbed fever exploding, Semmelweis discovered that doctors themselves were spreading the disease. While his simple reforms worked immediately#xE2;#x80;#x94;childbed fever in Vienna all but disappeared#xE2;#x80;#x94;they brought down upon Semmelweis the wrath of the establishment, and led to his tragic end.