Talk:Ignaz Semmelweis

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[edit] Involuntary

Why are we trying to cover up that Semmelweis' involuntary commitment was an attempt to suppress his ideas? --Daniel C. Boyer 18:33 Jan 6, 2003 (UTC)

It seems all the last six or so changes have aimed at giving more credit to Semmelweis and telling more of his story, but if you know something additional about his involuntary confinement, please add it. I had always thought that frustration at bucking the medical establishment was the cause of his breakdown, but please correct me, because it makes a horrible and tragic story even more horrible, tragic, and instructive. Ortolan88

Sounds like a Conspiracy theoryMidgley 14:04, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Prof. Frederico Di Trocchiio covered Semmelweis quite extensively in his book "Il genio incompresso" see also his book "the big swindle". He writes that Semmelweis was already infected i.e. doomed when he came into psychiatric treatment. Frank A

Did that suggest a toxic psychosis? Midgley 14:04, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Compliments aux auteurs

J'ai traduit l'article en français ; les médecins qui l'ont lu l'ont trouvé très intéressant et n'y ont rien repris. Gustave G. 15:33, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Verified-protected

03-January-2007: The article on "Semmelweis" contains medical information and has been verified, fixing the spelling of "Semmelweis" (twice) and documenting clinical data numbers. In the past 3 months (Oct-Dec 2006), IP-address edits have used the article for sandboxing & vandalism (once undetected for 11 days), which is too tedious for an article on medical information. Due to the medical implications, I am restricting edit-access to registered users, since re-verification has been tedious for several users during the past 3 months. As always, other users can request unprotecting the article to add medical updates. -Wikid77 23:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Only admins can protect pages - it's a technical fact. Requests for page protection are made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. In the meantime I will remove the redundant and ineffective protection template. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 00:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Earlier discovery of contagion?

Why is Semmelweis, who is one of my personal heros, given credit for what was known for decades in Britain? Oliver Wendell Homes essay "THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER" (1843) quotes British authorities as expressing a need to protect people from infection well before Semmelweis's unfortunate experience. "A certain number of deaths is caused every year by the contagion of puerperal fever, communicated by the nurses and medical attendants." Farr, in Fifth Annual Report of Registrar-General of England, 1843. AND ". . . boards of health, if such exist, or, without them, the medical institutions of a country, should have the power of coercing, or of inflicting some kind of punishment on those who recklessly go from cases of puerperal fevers to parturient or puerperal females, without using due precaution; and who, having been shown the risk, criminally encounter it, and convey pestilence and death to the persons they are employed to aid in the most interesting and suffering period of female existence." --Copland's Medical Dictionary, Art. Puerperal States and Diseases, 1852, AND "We conceive it unnecessary to go into detail to prove the contagious nature of this disease, as there are few, if any, American practitioners who do not believe in this doctrine."--Dr. Lee, in Additions to Article last cited. It would seem that people who portray Semmelweis as a discoverer are arriving very late on the scene? It seems it is just his attitude that makes him a story. Check out Oliver Wendell Holmes on the same subject, in 1843. - Chris Brown, http://ages.ca/semmelweis (-216.106.109.246 on 17Jan07)

28-March-2007: The work of Semmelweis was around the same time (M.D. 1844), and he is on record in 1847 (not "decades" later). Please note the tragedy was not just his reputation/life, but the actual deaths of hundreds/thousands of young mothers (why notable); however, wars were rampant in those years, so thousands of men died in combat, also at that time. Semmelweis is noted for the extensive clinical trials (beyond Oliver Wendell Holmes) in Austria (proving the concept outside England/USA). The story in many sources does seem overly dramatic; actually, the government of Hungary mandated the hand-washing during his life; however, remember that his friend died of the fever, and when Semmelweis left Austria, the maternity deaths rose, again, from 1% to 35% in the same ward (!). Unnecessary deaths plus people "stuck on stupid" make any story notable: compare Vietnam (troops died every day) plus "what part of violence-begets-violence do you fail to understand?"... The issue of people "stuck on stupid" is rampant, even in the 21st century: someone said it best, "There are none so blind as those who WILL NOT see." So, even though the abrasive attitude of Semmelweis is part of the story, also notable is the vanity of the other doctors who were, within 20 years (1867), proven worldwide, to be self-righteous, murdering fools. (You can bet that many doctors took that sickening revelation to their graves.) On balance, the story is classic tragedy: the abrasive hero fights the grand-standing opponents in Vienna, while thousands die in the shadows, then the hero dies young, and only after his death is he avenged by the truth, which reveals his opponents to the world as murdering fools. Wikid77 16:28, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Pay attention to detail: By the end of 1847 when the work of Semmelweis began to spread around Europe, James Young Simpson, a prominent British obstetrician, claimed that, in recognizing the danger of contagion, Semmelweis had only discovered what the British had recognized years earlier. But Semmelweis' real discovery was not that childbed fever was contagious (i.e. originated from the victims themselves) but that *any* kind of decaying organic matter could cause the condition. (Carter and Carter, Childbed fever 2005:55-56.) Also, if the British claim were valid, why were they not the first to report astonishing reductions in mortality rates?Frank.hedlund (talk) 12:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portraits

28-March-2007: I have added a 2nd portrait to the "Semmelweis" article, after the first image was botched by a widespread misspelling of "Semmelweis" as "-weiss" which corrupted the image-file name. I corrected the 19 misspellings of "Semmelweis" (3rd time in 6 months), and re-added the original portrait image of the Austrian postage stamp.

Ignaz Semmelweis (1860 portrait): advised handwashing with a chlorinated-lime solution in 1847.

Semmelweis on an old Austrian postage stamp.

The 2 portraits are long-term images in Wikimedia Commons, and are shown here for confirmation that they still exist as named. The name "Semmelweis" was misspelled in the 1911 Britannica with "ss" as "-weiss" and every few months, people have changed the article to use the incorrect "ss" spelling. I need to add a footnote that the spelling is "-weis" to deter future re-spellings. -Wikid77 19:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Significance of Statistics

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in adding (or my adding)a section on the significance of the use of statistical methods? He was a pioneer in this, and his statistics have been recrunched by modern mathemeticians (google for instance Broemeling, L.D. "Studies in the history of probability and statistics: Semmelweis and childbed fever. A statistical analysis 147 years later." Dept of Biostatistics and Applied Mathematics, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.--User:Palmd001 20:39, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe the claims on his use of statistical methods are an anachronism. In his 1861 publication he applies time series, he groups data and computes averages for the groups. This is application of descriptive statistical methods, perhaps advanced at the time, but it would be presumptious to say that he applied statistical methods in the contemporary meaning of this concept. With the benefit of hindsight we identify obvious trends in the data, but at the time, mortality rates were fluctuating wildly and unexplicably, see Historical mortality rates of puerperal fever for some actual data series. Power.corrupts (talk) 21:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Semmelweis in pop culture

Semmelweis is noted in one or more Vonnegut books and in Brad Pitt's asylum monologue in "12 Monkeys." Perhaps a section listing these sorts of items? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stanky (talk • contribs) 15:21, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Old text moved here

I have deleted or profoundly changed an introductory text, copied below for easy reference. The text is unreferenced, and there are several inconsistenties with my sources - both problems plagued the article before I revised it. Most of the info may well be entirely correct, I just dont know which parts are, and which are not.

Semmelweis was born July 1, 1818 in Tabán, an old commercial sector of Buda, the fifth child of a prosperous shopkeeper called Adolf of German origin. He received his elementary education at the Catholic Gymnasium of Buda, then completed his schooling at the University of Pest from 1835 to 1837. Semmelweis' father wanted him to become a military advocate in the service of the Austrian bureaucracy, but when Semmelweis travelled to Vienna in the fall of 1837 to enroll in its law school he was instead attracted to medicine. Apparently without parental opposition, he enrolled in the medical school instead.

Semmelweis returned to Pest after his first year and continued his studies at the local university from 1839-1841. However, displeased by the backward conditions at Pest University, he moved to the Second Vienna Medical School in 1841. The latter school combined laboratory and bedside medicine and became one of the most prominent centers of medicine for the next century. In the last two years some of his teachers included Carl von Rokitansky, Josef Skoda and Ferdinand von Hebra. Semmelweis completed his botanically-oriented dissertation early in 1844 and remained in Vienna after graduation to repeat a two-month course in practical midwifery. He received a Magister degree in the subject. He also completed some surgical training and spent almost fifteen months (October 1844 - February 1846) with Skoda learning diagnostic and statistical methods. Afterward he became assistant in the First Obstetrical Clinic of the Vienna General Hospital (German: Wiener Allgemeines Krankenhaus), the university's teaching hospital.

In the mid-19th century it was common for a doctor to move directly from one patient to the next without washing his hands, or to move from performing an autopsy on a diseased body to examining a living person. Semmelweis hypothesized that "particles" introduced into the women caused puerperal fever, and that these particles were spread on the hands of the doctors and students. Semmelweis ordered that hands be washed in a chlorine solution before each examination. Mortality rates among women attended by doctors and medical students quickly dropped from 18.27 to 1.27 percent.^[1] In 1861, Semmelweis published a book that described his findings and recommendations. He influenced Joseph Lister but years passed before the importance of disinfection was widely appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Power.corrupts (talk • contribs) 23:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] High resolution images needed

Professors at the medical faculty, University of Pest, 1863. Semmelweis standing, arms crossed. Standing left is János Diescher, Semmelweis' successor.

I found this low res image on http://members.chello.at/biografie/wolfgangtschirk/ToedlicheWahrheit.html. It is it possibly from this book - Gortvay, G.; Zoltán I.: "Semmelweis, His Life and Work" - which I do not have access to.

I think it is a great image and, in general, that the article would benefit from high resolution images, including this one. I have been told that the persons are, from left to right: Standing: János Diescher, János Wagner, Lajos Arányi, Ignác Semmelweis, Gáspár Lippay, Jászef Lenhossék, Jenö Jendrássik, Döme Nedelkó, Ferenc Linzbauer, Dávid Wachtel, Tamás Stockinger. If anybody has access to this book, could they confirm this info, and possibly upload this (and hopefylly other images) in a higher resolution. Power.corrupts (talk) 12:44, 28 May 2008 (UTC)