Ignaz Semmelweiss: The hand washer
Discovery
BBC
4.3 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
Lindsey Fitzharris tells the story of Ignaz Semmelweiss, the hand washer. In a world that had no understanding of germs, he tried to apply science to halt the spread of infection. Ignaz Semmelweis observed that many young medical students at his hospital in Vienna went directly from an autopsy, still covered in contaminated dead flesh, to attend pregnant women. Could this be the reason for such high maternal mortality rates from conditions like puerperal fever? Believing that the disease was caused by “infective material” from a dead body, Semmelweiss set up a basin filled with chlorinated lime solution in his hospital and began saving women’s lives with three simple words: ‘wash your hands’. He was demonised by his colleagues for his efforts, but today, he is known as the “Saviour of Mothers.”
Lindsey Fitzharris discusses some of the common myths surrounding the story of Semmelweiss with Dr Barron H. Lerner of New York University Langone School of Medicine. And she talks to Professor Val Curtis, Director of the Environmental Health Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who has studied the amount of hand washing by medical staff in hospitals today.
Picture: Victorian boy washing his hands in a stream, Credit: whitemay
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:08.9 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.1 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by |
| 0:23.1 | their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism |
| 0:27.8 | with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. I'm Philip Ball and today on Discovery from |
| 0:35.0 | the BBC, I'm here with another story from the history of science. |
| 0:40.1 | Today, Lindsay Fitzharris tells the story of Ignat's Semmelweis. |
| 0:45.7 | Who will buy my sweet with roses? |
| 0:52.9 | The calls of street vendors, along with the laughter of children, playing just beyond the walls of a Victorian hospital, often masks the horror going on within. |
| 1:03.0 | Today, we think of the hospital as an exemplar of sanitation. |
| 1:07.4 | However, they were anything but. |
| 1:10.6 | In 1825, visitors to St. George's in London discovered many of the However, they were anything but. |
| 1:20.6 | In 1825, visitors to St. George's in London discovered mushrooms and maggots thriving in the damp, dirty sheets of a patient recovering from a compound fracture. |
| 1:28.2 | The afflicted man, believing this to be the norm, had not complained about the conditions, nor had any of his fellow bedmates thought the squalor especially noteworthy. Those unlucky enough to be admitted to this and other |
| 1:33.7 | hospitals of the era were nerd to the horrors that resided within. Hospitals reeked of urine, |
| 1:40.3 | vomit, and other bodily fluids. The smell was so offensive that the staff sometimes walked around |
| 1:45.9 | with handkerchiefs pressed to their noses. Doctors didn't exactly smell like rosebeds either. |
| 1:51.6 | They rarely washed their hands or their instruments, and they carried with them what those in the |
| 1:56.0 | profession cheerfully referred to as good old hospitals stink. But in a world that had no understanding of germs, one man tried to apply science to halt |
| 2:06.3 | the spread of infection. His name was Ignaz Semmelweis. |
| 2:13.2 | The operating theater itself was just as dirty as the surgeons working in them. They consisted of a stage partially enclosed by stands rising one above another toward a large skylight that illuminated the area below. On days when clouds blotted out the sun, thick candles lit the scene. In the middle of the room was a wooden table with the telltale signs of past |
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