The Tragedy of Ignaz Semmelweis In 1847, Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis made a horrifying discovery at Vienna General Hospital: doctors were killing their patients. The maternity ward run by physicians had a mortality rate of 10-35% from “childbed fever,” while the midwife-run ward had only 4%. The difference? Doctors performed autopsies in the morning, then delivered babies without washing their hands. When his friend died from an infection after a scalpel accident during an autopsy—with

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor, now known as an...