Ignaz Semmelweis
oracknows | March 20, 2017[Orac note: A combination of power outages, travel to Seattle, and trying to write something for my not-so-super-secret other blog conspired to leave me with nothing for this morning. So I thought I'd resurrect this old gem, which hasn't been reposted in at least four years. I actually did try to remove the dead links (this post dates back nearly 12 years in some form or another), but I probably missed a couple. I also changed the post a little, just to remove clearly outdated stuff. In the mean time, be assured that, with no more travel planned and our power restored, things should get back…
lborkowski | May 7, 2012A recent Freakonomics podcast tells one of my favorite public health stories: how observant physician Ignaz Semmelweis figured out how to slash the incidence of childbed, or puerperal, fever, a disease that killed 10-15% of the women who gave birth in the doctor-staffed ward of the Vienna General Hospital in the mid-nineteenth century. (Death rates were similarly alarming elsewhere, since germ theory hadn't yet taken hold.)
As the podcast explains, Semmelweis observed that the death rate from childbed fever was lower among women who delivered babies in the ward staffed by midwives compared to…