The Doctor Who Was Right All Along

Before doctors examine patients, they’re trained to wash their hands, preventing the spread of germs.
History teaches us that a French chemist, Louis Pasteur, made this discovery, but that’s not entirely accurate.
Years before Pasteur, Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician and scientist, tried to stop the spread of “childbed fever,” also known as puerperal fever, which was common during the mid-1800s in mothers giving birth, often proving fatal.
Semmelweis concluded from his experience delivering babies that the cause of the childbed fever outbreak might have been due to doctors not washing their hands from birth to birth — ultimately carrying germs and infecting mothers.
At Vienna General Hospital, in the obstetrical ward, Semmelweis then had all doctors wash their hands before and after each delivery. Quickly, the death rate dropped below 2 percent, and childbed fever was no longer a factor.

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