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Frontiers | Science News

Ignaz Semmelweis (1860) aged 42 | Public Domain

Frontiers for Young Minds takes you down on a dive into the depths of the historical scientific archives and introduces you to scientists you may have not heard about, but you should! This time, we tell you the story of the invaluable contribution of Ignaz Semmelweis to the field of antiseptic policy by his discovery in infectious disease prevention - or, why you among others should wash your hands.

By Paola Pellanda

The Covid pandemic has reminded us more than ever of the importance of washing our hands to stop spreading infections, but the idea that germs cause disease was widely ignored before the second half of the 19th century.

Decades before the champions of the germ theory formalized the relationship between germs and diseases, an unappreciated Hungarian physician, Ignaz Semmelweis, showed the importance of correct hand hygiene in medical practice, using the example of the deadly puerperal fever after childbirth.

A man with a mission

Ignaz Semmelweis was born in a wealthy family of Budapes

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Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis was born on July 1, 1818, as the fifth of ten children in the Meindl House (Palota, later Apród utca 1-3) in Tabán, a neighborhood of Buda, today part of Budapest, to his father József Semmelweis, a spice trader, and his mother Terézia Müller, who was of Swabian origin. He went to secondary school at the Cistercian Saint Stephen Gymnasium in Székesfehérvár and the University Catholic Gymnasium located in the Buda Castle, where he received excellent marks, after which he enrolled in a two-year humanities course at the University of Pest. (*At the time, Buda, Pest and Óbuda were separate towns; the three merged in 1873 to create Budapest.)

In 1837, in line with his father’s wishes, who wanted him to become a judge-advocate, he began studying law at the University of Vienna, but switched to medicine later that same year. His decision was influenced largely by the fact that he shared accommodations with medical students, whose studies he found more interesting than his own ones in law. He completed his medical studies in Vienna and Pest and received his docto

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Scientist of the Day - Ignaz Semmelweis

Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician, was born July 1, 1818. In 1846, Semmelweis was placed in charge of an obstetrics clinic at Vienna General Hospital, and was trying to solve the enigma of puerperal, or childbirth, fever. Over 13% of his clinic’s maternal patients died from postnatal complications. Puzzlingly, in the other Vienna Hospital Obstetrical Clinic, set up for the teaching of midwives, the mortality rate was only 2%. Semmelweiss's clinic taught, not midwives, but medical students. He did all sorts of experiments to find the reason for the difference in mortality rate, without success.

Then in 1847, a physician colleague of Semmelweis was nicked with a scalpel while dissecting a cadaver; he rapidly developed an infection and died. Interestingly, his symptoms were similar to those of women who died of childbirth fever (which was, in fact, a horrible death). It occurred to Semmelweis that perhaps some “cadaveral material” entered the wound and caused the infection and death.

Vienna General Hospital, 19th-century