First published 2013
Ignac Semmelweis watches women die from childbed fever in mid-nineteenth-century Vienna hospitals. The young doctor notices a pattern that horrifies his colleagues: physicians moving between autopsy rooms and maternity wards carry death on their hands. When Semmelweis mandates handwashing with chlorinated lime, deaths plummet almost immediately. His simple solution works, but the medical establishment turns against him. Fellow doctors reject his findings and attack his character. Semmelweis faces a choice between staying silent or defending a truth that could save countless lives. Surgeon and author Sherwin B. Nuland brings clinical insight to this account of medical discovery. The story reveals how one man's observation challenged centuries of accepted practice, leading to both triumph and personal destruction.
Genres: biography, history, 20th-century, history-of-medicine, 19th-century, academic
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: truth-vs-establishment, underdog
Setting: Vienna
Period: Mid-19th Century
203 pages · Kindle Edition · W. W. Norton & Company