Doctor Death

“Madam, this is Dr. Death the obstetrician assigned to assist with your delivery.  Kindly ignore his bloodied hands and coat - it is now 1845 and according to modern medical science, this demonstrates he is eminently qualified to consult having just conducted autopsies on several women who died from childbirth. As it is claimed, ‘doctors are gentlemen and gentlemen’s hands are clean’ and of course ‘cleanliness is next to prudishness.’
After all, what's a bit of blood and guts between doctor and patient...Doctor knows best dear."
        

Well you and I should be grateful Dr. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (b. Budapest, Hungary 1818) sacrificed his professional reputation in 1847 by insisting medical students coming into the maternity ward of Vienna General Hospital from the dissecting room must first wash their hands in chlorinated lime solution.



Dr. Ignaz. P.Semmelweis

Was he onto something here?  The mortality rate due to puerperal fever plummeted from 30% to 2% and Semmelweis published his findings as “The Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxsis of Childbed Fever” in 1861 – only to be mocked by his peers.

In 1865 Sir Joseph Lister conducted the first antiseptic operation, later receiving honour as Queen Victoria’s surgeon and elevation to baronetcy, while poor Semmelweis died shunned and forgotten in a mental asylum at the age of only 47. His findings were subsequently confirmed by French scientist Louis Pasteur.  

Should medical science have known better? If they had opened their Bibles and read Numbers chapter 19 they would have found:

“He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days…and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even.”

But isn’t this just Jewish ceremonial law? Why should medical science take any notice of religious mumbo-jumbo in the Jewish Tanakh?                                           

From 1347 on, the Black Death ravaged Europe to take the lives of about 30 million people - approximately 1/3 of the population, but the Jews suffered much lower losses from disease because of their social isolation in ghettos, and their personal and domestic hygiene. Instead they suffered massive revenge killings, being accused of contaminating the village wells while discreetly sourcing their drinking water direct from springs.

I wonder where they learnt their standards of hygiene? 

*Many thanks to my dear friend ‘Uncle Bob’ Bryce, Port Macquarie, NSW.* (retired Perth City Fire Commander)

Acknowledgements:                                                          

en.wikipedia.com                                                   

World Book 2005