Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

Wash your hands. It's a common refrain, whether you're an elementary schooler in a classroom or an adult hard at work.

When you're a child, you're told to wash your hands because the throw-up germ lives between your fingers.

When you're an adult, you're given the less fun version. You don't want to spread disease to yourself and others.

Abrasive, though, it can be this hand-washing propaganda is actually the result of decades of hard-won medical knowledge.

It represents a major public health breakthrough, on par with vaccinations and fluoride.

And as it so happens, we owe that breakthrough to one man, who no one wanted to listen to.

Ignaz Semmelweis was born in 1818 to a Jewish family in Hungary. By 1837, he was pursuing a

career in the budding world of medicine. He traveled to Vienna, Austria, to work at the hospital.

Vienna General was one of the premier medical facilities in all of Europe.

But being that Ignaz was both Jewish and Hungarian, he met with a lot of prejudice that

limited the areas of medicine that he was allowed to work in. However, that prejudice set Ignaz

on a fateful course. He landed in obstetrics, the area of medicine dealing with pregnancy and

childbirth.

This wasn't seen as a particularly desirable post back then.

Childbirth had been the domain of female midwives for centuries, but Ignaz was determined to make the best of it.

Upon his arrival at the maternity division, he soon learned of a disturbing trend.

There were two wards under his purview, one where midwives delivered babies, and one where

doctors performed the deliveries.

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