There was a man who saved the lives of thousands, of millions of women. A hero who with his intelligence, with his perseverance and finally with his own life, demonstrated something that the scientists of his time denied.
It was called Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis and was born in Hungary in 1818. He died in 1865 in a last desperate gesture to prove the validity of his theory. Only, years later, Louis Pasteur's discoveries would scientifically explain that he had always been right.
He was a doctor at the Hospital of Vienna and was shivering at the very high numbers of deaths of women who were treated in their deliveries at the Hospital. He was struck that the problem was barely present in mothers giving birth at home or on the street. Many mothers died of "puerperal fever", with intense pain and giving off a foul odor.
The doctor begins to investigate and reaches a simple conclusion: the women are infected by the doctors who attend them, especially by the students who have previously been performing autopsies. Its recommendation is also simple, you have to wash hands and instruments to avoid contagion.
However, no discoveries had been made in microbiology to support his thesis, so he suffered the rejection of his colleagues and was expelled from the profession. In those circumstances I would write an open letter in which I denounced what was happening.
A letter that, saving the distances, should be read by all scientists and doctors so as not to forget that we always, always, have much to learn and that new ideas can be revealed true even if at first they may seem crazy.
"I would have liked very much that my discovery was of a physical nature, because the light is explained as explained, so it does not stop shining, it depends on the physicists. My discovery, alas, depends on the tocologists. And with this Everything has already been said ... Assassins! I call all those who oppose the norms I have prescribed to avoid puerperal fever, against them, I stand up as a determined adversary, just as one should rise against the supporters of a crime! For me, there is no other way to treat them than as murderers, and everyone who has their heart in their place will think like me! It is not necessary to close the maternity wards so that the disasters we deplore cease, but it is convenient to throw the Tocologists, since they are the ones who behave like real epidemics ... "
Semmelweis He lost his mind, we'll never know if out of despair It related how the bell announcing a death became obsessive. Who would not lose his mind, not only because he felt persecuted, but because of the impotence of not saving thousands of human lives?
After years of hospitalization he improved. And then he made his last heroic gesture. In the pavilion of forensic anatomy he approached a corpse that was being studied. He opened it with a scalpel and then injured himself. Shortly after he died with the same symptoms as those women who tried all his life to protect, demonstrating the truth of everything he defended. A brave man who saved the lives of millions of women. More information | Semmelweis Society
