Regina:

Although we didn't take pictures, we have to mention the Ignaz Semmelweis Museum. Few couples would be eccentric enough to BOTH be excited at stumbling upon it.

We had each read about Semmelweis; he was a Hungarian doctor who realized that women were dying of "childbed fever" because doctors went straight from treating people with tuberculosis and other infectious conditions to delivering babies- without even washing their hands.

A rumpled, bloodstained smock, after all, was a status symbol that showed how busy and prosperous the doctor's practice was. In the meantime, the women delivered by midwives had a lower mortality rate. It took years for Semmelweis' ideas to be accepted. Ironically, he died of blood poisoning.

We went through the museum, aided by a helpful guide who spoke some English and by deciphering Latin inscriptions on some items (including a vial of "dragons' blood"!) and German labels on the exhibits. Semmelweis’ ashes are interred in the courtyard of the museum, which was also his home and that of his parents before him.

Read Encyclopedia Britannica on Dr. Semmeiweis?

Ron:

Ignaz Semmelweis, is hardly a household name, but he really should be. He is singly responsible for one of the most important advances in modern medicine.

While most medical advances are extensions of earlier work, his began with an bedrock concept, a brilliant insight that was almost entirely independent of any earlier findings. In fact, because his theory was absolutely counter to the accepted medical knowledge of his time, it was very slow to be accepted, even after clinical results proved its validity beyond any reasonable doubt.

Essentially, Dr. Semmelweis invented the concept of antisepsis, the prevention of infection.

As a first step in validating his theory he proved that protecting a patient from infection could be as simple as the doctors in a maternity ward washing their hands between patient examinations.

His simple hand-washing regimen was responsible for reducing maternal mortality in his ward from as high as 20% to a fraction of one percent. Moreover, when antisepsis was finally accepted and extended to other areas of medical practice, it made possible the entire repertoire of modern surgery, as well as far more effective treatment of serious wounds and burns.

Joseph Lister, the English physician (later made Baron) who is credited with the introduction of antisepsis in surgery, very graciously said of Dr. Semmelweis, “I think with the greatest admiration of him and his achievement. And it fills me with joy that at last he is given the respect due to him.”

(Dr. Lister was seventeen years old when Dr. Semmelweis first demonstrated the validity of his theory in a hospital in Vienna, while Louis Pasteur, on whose work Dr. Lister based his own, was still in university in Paris at age 22.)