The Savior Of Mothers Poem by Paul Hartal

“Gentlemen,
you should wash your hands! ”
The doctor who said these words
was young, balding and mustached
and his colleagues looked at him
shocked, as if he uttered
an abominable obscenity.

Ignaz Semmelweis,
‘the savior of mothers’,
was a Hungarian physician working
at the First Obstetrical Clinic
of the Vienna General Hospital.
In 1847 he proposed washing
with chlorinated lime solutions
in order to prevent childbed fever.

Dr. Semmelweis discovered
that disinfecting with this antiseptic
could drastically reduce
the incidence of puerperal infections.

For a long time he was puzzled
why the doctors’ wards
at the First Clinic of the Hospital
had three times the mortality
of the midwives’ wards at the Second Clinic.

In fact, the reputation of the doctors’ ward
was so bad that terrified expectant mothers
begged on their knees to be admitted only
to the clinic of the midwives.
More than one of these desperate women
preferred to give birth in the streets
rather than to be admitted to the first clinic.

It had bewildered Semmelweis
that childbed fever was very rare
among women giving birth on the street.
He spent many sleepless nights,
his mind wondering
what could be the reason
that delivering a baby outside the clinic
was safer than inside.

The hospital statistics has recorded
that in December 1842,75 mothers died
out of 239, in the First Clinic.

Why was that? Semmelweis asked.
And he also wanted to know
what could be the reason
that in 1845 the annual mortality rate
was 6.9 % at the doctor-operated First Clinic,
whereas in the same year it was more than
three times lower,2%, at the Second Clinic,
where only midwives worked.

He observed that obstetricians,
performing autopsies on women,
who had died of womb infection
after child birth,
failed to clean thoroughly their hands
before conducting medical examinations.
This made Semmelweis to suspect
that the doctors themselves transferred
the disease of cadaverous poisoning
by transmitting an unknown agent from
the dead to the living.


In 1847 Semmelweis demonstrated
that puerperal fever is contagious.
The breakthrough came about
when his close friend, Jakob Kolletschka,
during the examination of a corpse
accidentally had been poked with a scalpel.
Dr. Kolletschka had died
showing symptoms that resembled
the pathology of women
dying from childbed fever.

The tragedy led Semmelweis
to surmise that puerperal fever
resulted from contaminating agents
transmitted from dead bodies.

He had introduced hand washing
with chlorinated lime solutions,
a hygienic measure that yielded
immediately dramatic results:
The incidence of fatal puerperal fever
dropped from an average 10%
to about 1% at the hospital.

However, the medical community
reacted to this groundbreaking discovery
with indifference and malice.
His colleagues derided and ridiculed him.
They were offended at the suggestion
of washing their hands;
because, as they saw it,
the instruction compromised
their social status by implying
that they were unclean.

They also had been stuck with
the entrenched belief that childbed fever
was caused by different diseases,
spreading by ‘miasmas’, bad vapors
originating from atmospheric,
terrestrial, or cosmic influences.
Semmelweis’ insistence that childbed fever
resulted from one single cause:
The lack of adequate sanitation,
was simply unacceptable to his colleagues.

In spite of the empirical evidence
validating Semmelweis,
the medical community by consensus
refused to recognize
his groundbreaking discovery.

Mind you, Semmelweis conducted
his trailblazing research
prior to Pasteur’s microbial discoveries.
Consequently, he lacked the scientific support
of the germ theory of disease,
which posthumously vindicated him.

Unfortunately, Semmelweis could offer
no theoretical explanation for his findings.
The scientific consensus collided
with the facts and eclipsed the truth.
Even the eminent scientist Rudolf Virchow,
‘the father of modern pathology’
rejected Semmelweis’ doctrine.

The tides of history had complicated
Semmelweis’ situation in Austria.
In 1848 the Hungarian Revolution
turned into a War of Independence
against the ruling Habsburgs.
In its aftermath Semmelweis left Vienna
and returned to Hungary.
In 1850 he settled in the city of Pest.

He took up
an unpaid head-physician position
of the obstetric ward
in the small Rochus Hospital
where he succeeded
to reduce the death rate
from childbed fever to less than 1%.

However, he still saw no recognition.
The medical establishment continued
to ignore him and even to harass him.

He grew increasingly bitter.
He became polemical, moody and depressed.
To many people he appeared to behave
as a lunatic and even his wife suspected
that he was mentally ill.

In 1865, Dr. Semmelweis was lured
to visit a new insane asylum in Vienna.
Upon arrival he began to suspect
that this was a trap
but by then it was too late.
He tried to escape,
But the guards restrained him
and had beaten him severely.
Then they forced upon him a straitjacket
and threw him into a darkened cell.

Semmelweis died of his injuries
two weeks later.
He was 47 years old.
Ironically, the autopsy showed
that what killed him was septicemia,
blood poisoning, which also causes
puerperal fever.

Nevertheless,
recognition has come eventually,
albeit not in his lifetime.
Among others,
the renowned British developer
of sterile surgery, Joseph Lister,
for example, acknowledged in 1894
his great debt to Semmelweis.

Nowadays, Dr. Semmelweis is celebrated
as a pioneer of antiseptic practices.
The Semmelweis University of Medicine
in Budapest is named after him
and in Vienna a hospital for women
bears his name.

His life story has been told
In numerous books and films.
Hungary, Austria and Germany
have honored him on postal stamps.

Although truth
does not depend on public affirmation,
communal objection might ostracise it.
The scientific paradigm of
The 19th century conflicted
with the ideas of Semmelweis.
Its entrenched norms contradicted
the empirical results of his findings.
The medical ignorance of the era
allied itself with scientific consensus.
It had obfuscated the facts,
muddled the evidence and exiled truth
from the obstetrical wards.

The Savior of Mothers,
a staunch pioneer of science
and a loyal champion
of evidence-based medicine,
followed his challenging fate,
of a troubled life
treading the winding path
of unrelenting truth,
a lofty and noble companion,
yet a cruel mistress.