The case of Dr Semmelweis and Childbed fever Dr Semmelweis was an obstetrician interested in a major clinical and public health problem of the day: childbed fever, also known as puerperal fever (the word "puerperal" means related to childbirth or to the period after the birth). In those days, the hospital Semmelweis worked at had 2 childbirth clinics: The First Clinic was staffed by physicians and medical students and the Second Clinic by midwives. Physicians and medical students began their days performing autopsies on women who had died from childbed fever; they then provided clinical care for women hospitalized in the First Clinic for childbirth. The midwives staffing the Second Clinic did not perform autopsies. Mortality in the First Clinic was more than twice as high as in the Second Clinic-16\% compared with \( 7 \% \). Semmelweis suggested that the hands of physicians and medical students were transmitting disease- causing particles, from the cadavers to the women who were about to deliver. So he developed and implemented a policy for the physicians and medical students to wash their hands and to brush under their fingernails after they had finished the autopsies and before they came in contact with any of the patients. The graph below shows the result of this intervention: Unfortunately, for many years Semmelweis refused to present his findings at major meetings or to submit written reports of his studies to medical journals. His failure to provide supporting scientific evidence was at least partially responsible for the failure of the medical community to accept his hypothesis of causation of childbed fever and his further proposed intervention of handwashing hefore examinina each natient. I et's cherk the