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      Childbed Fever
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      Book

      Childbed Fever

      DOI link for Childbed Fever

      Childbed Fever book

      A Scientific Biography of Jgnaz Semmelweis

      Childbed Fever

      DOI link for Childbed Fever

      Childbed Fever book

      A Scientific Biography of Jgnaz Semmelweis
      ByR. Codell Carter, Barbara R. Carter
      Edition 1st Edition
      First Published 2005
      eBook Published 28 February 2005
      Pub. Location New York
      Imprint Routledge
      DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315081434
      Pages 142
      eBook ISBN 9781315081434
      Subjects Social Sciences
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      Carter, R.C., & Carter, B.R. (2005). Childbed Fever: A Scientific Biography of Jgnaz Semmelweis (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315081434

      ABSTRACT

      The life and work of Ignaz Semmelweis is among the most engaging and moving stories in the history of science. Childbed Fever makes the Semmelweis story available to a general audience, while placing his life, and his discovery, in the context of his times. In 1846 Vienna, as what would now be called a head resident of obstetrics, Semmelweis confronted the terrible reality of childbed fever, which killed prodigious numbers of women throughout Europe and America. In May 1847 Semmelweis was struck by the realization that, in his clinic, these women had probably been infected by the decaying remains of human tissue. He believed that infection occurred because medical personnel did not wash their hands thoroughly after conducting autopsies in the morgue. He immediately began requiring everyone working in his clinic to wash their hands in a chlorine solution. The mortality rate fell to about one percent. While everyone at the time rejected his account of the cause of the disease because his theory was fundamentally inconsistent with existing medical beliefs about how diseases were transmitted, in time Semmelweis was proven to be correct. His work led to the adoption of a new way of thinking about disease, thus helping to create an entirely new theory - the etiological standpoint - that still dominates medicine today.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      chapter 1|20 pages

      Vienna's General Hospital

      chapter 2|20 pages

      Childbed Fever

      chapter 3|22 pages

      Semmelweis's Discovery

      chapter 4|20 pages

      Resorption Fever

      chapter 5|14 pages

      Mayrhofer's Discovery

      chapter 6|20 pages

      Puerperal Infection

      chapter |2 pages

      Postscript

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