Expert: Florence M Rollwagen - 11/2/2008

Question
Hello,
I am doing my science GCSE early but I am only in year 9, do you know how I can revise without stress and not taking too much time but being able to remember it all?
Also I had all these questions to answer but one of them I have tried researcing and reading about but all the information I find about it is too heavy and I can't understand it. I would have asked my teacher but I am on half term at the moment, please help me.
The question was... What contribution did Semmelweiss make to the contro of infection?
I know this question is to do with human biology and diseases/infections but if you could help I would really appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
Alexandra

Answer
Hi Alexandra:  Thanks for your question.

Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor who worked in a maternity hospital.  Pregnant women would go to the hospital to give birth to their babies and were taken care of by either doctors or midwives (women trained in birthing).  

At this time (the mid 1800's), new mothers were dying at an alarming rate of a disease called puerpural fever (puer is Latin for child), or childbed fever.  

You have to remember that in these days, nobody knew about infection, bacteria or viruses, and certainly didn't know that they could be transmitted by people.  In fact the disease malaria was thought to be caused by bad air (mal - bad, aria - air).

Semmelweis made the observation (remember all science starts with observation) that mothers who were taken care of by midwives didn't die, but those who were attended by doctors got sick and many died.

This is really the key to Semmelweis' contribution.  He noticed that the doctors spent their mornings dissecting (cutting up and examining) mothers who died of childbed fever.  Then in the afternoon they took care of the new mothers. WITHOUT WASHING THEIR HANDS OR CHANGING THEIR CLOTHES!!!!! The midwives didn't do the dissections, they just took care of new mothers.

So Semmelweis made the hypothesis (scientific guess) that the doctors were transmitting something from the dead bodies to the new mothers.  The midwives didn't have anything to transmit, since they weren't exposed to the bacteria in the dead bodies.

What Semmelweis then did was to make the doctors wash their hands after examining the contaminated bodies before taking care of the new mothers.  Within a couple of weeks the rate of childbed fever dropped to nearly zero.  (can you guess why?)

So Semmelweis, even though he didn't know about bacteria, infection or transmission, was able to reduce the incidence of childbed fever in new mothers just by hand washing.  Now, of course, we know that hand washing is the most important way to protect against infectious diseases.  Everybody laughed at him, but he got results, and is admired to this day for his observations.

I think you should go back and re-read the information you collected and see if it makes more sense now.

Let me know if there's anything else you don't understand.

FM Rollwagen, PhD