Rural Rounds

In 1847, maternal mortality from childbirth in a Hungarian clinic was approximately 18%. A second clinic that offered maternity services had numbers much nearer to 2%. Women begged for admission to the second clinic in order to avoid puerperal fever, the name of the illness associated with such significant death rates. At the First Clinic, medical students and physicians routinely performed autopsies as well as patient services, including maternity services. At the Second Clinic, midwives did delivery and did not participate in any autopsies. Following the death of a colleague who became sick with puerperal fever after being stuck with an autopsy scalpel, a physician named Ignaz Semmelweis inferred that cadaveric particles must cause puerperal fever, and that students and physicians were transferring them to mothers after doing autopsies. After instituting the practice of handwashing in the First Clinic, the mortality dropped from 18.3% in April of 1847 to 1.9% in August that same year...