IGNÁC SEMMELWEIS: BIOGRAPHY AND CONTRIBUTIONS (S) - MEDICINE - 2025

Ignác Semmelweis was a Hungarian obstetrician who lived during the 19th century and who created antiseptic procedures. He went on to challenge his own guild to defend his discovery, which today continues to save countless lives, especially those of women in labor and their newborn babies.

Although his investigations caused severe controversies both professionally and personally, after his physical disappearance the world recognized the significance of his findings. Semmelweis contributed to eradicating the so-called puerperal fever, determining the cause and disseminating a simple method to avoid it.

This condition was very common in his time and it killed one in three women in childbirth. His merit was to have marked a before and after in the history of medicine with his discovery: sepsis and antisepsis, work that earned him the title of "Savior of Mothers" for history.

Semmelweis was a man of tireless tenacity, with great deductive capacity and enormous human sensitivity. His foolproof ethics so upset his colleagues that it cost him his life.

Biography

Ignác Phillip Semmelweis was born on July 1, 1810 in Hungary, in a town called Tabán located in the town of Buda.

He was a member of a wealthy family that was dedicated to the food trade. His father was named Josef Semmelweis and his mother was Teresia Muller.

Studies

He began his higher studies at the University of Vienna. She entered as a law student, but in one of her autopsy classes she discovered her true calling; then he began to study medicine.

He completed his studies, graduating as a doctor in 1844. Then he got a vacant position to work as a teacher and assistant to the renowned Dr. Klein, who was the head of Obstetrics at the Vienna General Hospital maternity ward.

This institution had the peculiarity of being divided into two spaces. In the first, the medical students officiated, who alternated their attention to the women in labor with the autopsies of the corpses in the compound.

In the second space, it was the midwives who cared for the women in labor, and they dedicated themselves exclusively to this task.

Contributions

A phenomenon immediately caught the attention of Semmelweis. In the first part of the institution, the number of patients who died was notorious and high. The cause was a high fever that appeared after the delivery.

In the second part of the institution these fevers almost did not occur. Therefore, mortality rates from this cause were minimal.

Semmelweis observed the procedures used in both spaces of the hospital. Later, he devoted himself to recording the cases, symptoms and procedures used by his colleagues with meticulous statistics.

Finally he came to the conclusion that there was something in the processes of the first part of the hospital that caused the disease.

Hygiene

The problem detected by Semmelweis was that proper hygiene was not being carried out between the activities of students and doctors. Every time they carried out an autopsy, doctors and disciples only washed their hands with soap and water, and sometimes not even that.

Under these conditions, women were involved in their labor. The gynecological fissures typical of childbirth were contaminated by contact with hands impregnated with cadaveric matter, and this generated the deadly fever that ended the life of the mother and, sometimes, the child.

Given this finding, Semmelweis verified that the disease did not occur if after necroscopies the staff washed their hands with sodium hypochlorite diluted in water.

This solution completely sterilized the extremities and infections were prevented, thus reducing the number of deaths.

Rejection of your discovery

A sad event prompted him to report his discovery without delay: his colleague and friend, Dr. Kolletschka, was accidentally injured with a scalpel while teaching a student how to perform an autopsy.

The injury caused exactly the same symptoms as the patients in his hospital and sadly had the same outcome.

Alarmed, the young Semmelweis made his revelation known to the hospital authorities. However, it was rejected because it was interpreted as a direct accusation to the doctors of being the cause of the death of the patients.

Medical pursuit

The hospital director prevented the implementation of his assistant's methods and proceeded to expel Semmelweis from the institution. Not content with that, he used his influences to discredit him in the medical community.

The guild did not take Semmelweis' observations seriously due to lack of scientific evidence, and even harassed him for considering him uncomfortable and dangerous for the profession.

Desperate, Semmelweis wrote banners and posters denouncing the situation. In addition, he accused the doctors of being irresponsible and murderous for not correcting their bad procedures that caused so many deaths. He called on the students to adopt his methods, and some of them were well received.

Unemployed and subjected to public scorn, Semmelweis fell into a serious depressive state that even led to alcohol abuse.

Death

Someone he knew got him a position to teach at a minor university in the city of Pest. There he practiced until he was the victim of a conspiratorial move by his many enemies.

To get him out of the game, they created a false reputation for madness. Then, driven through deception on the excuse that his clearance was required for a ward of a new hospital, he was forcibly subdued and locked against his will in a madhouse.

There he received such cruel treatment from his custodians that he died two weeks later from infection from his wounds. Septicemia, a disease that he battled throughout his career, ended up ending his life in 1865.

Recognitions

Two decades later Louis Pasteur, with his germ theory, proved that Semmelweis' claims were correct.

His maternal home is today the Semmelweis Museum of the History of Medicine, and receives hundreds of visitors from around the world.

In 2015, UNESCO commemorated 150 years of the death of this health professional, declaring it the Year of Semmelweis. In this way he honored the memory and work of this misunderstood Hungarian doctor, who marked a milestone in universal medicine.

References

1. Apezteguía, F. (2015). The doctor who died from washing his hands. The mail. Recovered from: elcorreo.com
2. Miranda, M. (2008) Semmelweis and its scientific contribution to medicine: A hand washing saves lives. Chilean Journal of Infectology. Recovered from: scielo.conicyt.cl
3. Villanueva, M. (2015) Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865): Father of infection control. Galenus Magazine Nro. 29. Recovered from: galenusrevista.com
4. De Benito, E. (2015). Semmelweis, the martyr of handwashing. The country. Recovered from: elpais.com
5. Nuland, S. (2004) The madman of Pest. Book Magazine. Recovered from: revistadelibros.com