The character arc of Ignaz Semmelweis

A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record

Born 1 July 1818 in Buda. Died 13 August 1865 in Vienna, aged forty seven. Between the two sit a medical training, two maternity clinics with very different death rates, a colleague's death in 1847 that explained everything, an order to wash in chlorinated lime, mortality falling from over eighteen per cent to about one, years of being ridiculed, a book in 1861, and fourteen days in an asylum. The line below draws that whole life in order.

Tap the line to pluck it. Hover or tap any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of his life; the sources are at the foot of the page.

Who was Ignaz Semmelweis?

He was right, and it cost him everything.

He worked at the Vienna General Hospital, where the maternity service ran two clinics. In the first, where doctors and medical students worked, about one mother in ten died of puerperal fever. In the second, staffed by midwives, fewer than four in a hundred did. Women knew this and begged to be sent to the second. Everybody could see the difference and nobody could explain it.

In 1847 his colleague Jakob Kolletschka cut himself during an autopsy and died of an infection that looked exactly like puerperal fever. That was the answer. The doctors were coming from the dissecting room to the delivery room, carrying something on their hands. He ordered washing in chlorinated lime in the middle of May. The mortality rate in April had been 18.3 per cent. In June it was 2.2. In July it was 1.2.

It should have ended there. Instead the profession rejected it. Doctors were insulted by the suggestion that they were carrying death on their own hands, and germ theory did not yet exist to explain why he was right, so he had a result without a mechanism. He left Vienna for Pest, published a book setting out the evidence in 1861, and spent years writing increasingly furious letters to his critics. In 1865 he was committed to an asylum, and died fourteen days later of a gangrenous infection, which is the very thing he had spent his life trying to stop. Pasteur and Lister proved him right afterwards. His line is worth reading because being correct was not enough.

The moments

Ignaz Semmelweis's timeline.

The 1840s

~1846

One ward killed more mothers

Setback, and it changed everything. Everybody could see the difference. Women begged to be sent to the second one.

20 Mar 1847

Kolletschka died

Setback, and it changed everything. A friend dead from a scalpel cut, and in it the answer to everything.

15 May 1847

He ordered them to wash

Milestone, and it changed everything. One instruction, requiring nothing but a basin and the willingness to follow it.

Jul 1847

From 18 per cent to one

Milestone, and it changed everything. Eighteen in a hundred, then one. Written down, month by month, in his own figures.

~1849

The profession refused it

Setback, and it changed everything. He had a result and no mechanism, and he was telling respected men they had killed people.

1 Jun 1849

Let it go, or keep saying it

Crossroads, decided.

The paths laid out: keep saying it, taken, or publish quietly and move on. He was pushed out, wrote the book anyway, and was proved right by Pasteur and Lister after his death.

The 1850s

Oct 1850

He left Vienna

Setback, and it changed everything. Out of the hospital where he had proved it, to a city where he had to start again.

The 1860s

~1861

He wrote the book

Milestone, and it changed his direction. Fourteen years of figures, gathered into one volume, for a profession that had stopped listening.

~1863

The letters

Setback, and it changed his direction. He was right and nobody would act on it, and the letters got harder to read.

30 Jul 1865

Committed to an asylum

Setback, and it changed everything. Fourteen days. The cause of death was the thing he had spent his life trying to stop.

The line ends 13 Aug 1865, in Vienna, at forty seven. What it set moving arrived too late for him and has never stopped since: every surgeon who scrubs, every ward that keeps a basin by the door, and every mother who survives a birth she would not have survived in his first clinic.

What he wrote

Books by Ignaz Semmelweis

1861
Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever

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Ignaz Semmelweis: frequently asked questions

What people ask about his line.

What was Ignaz Semmelweis's character arc?

A physician who worked out in 1847 why mothers were dying in one hospital ward and not another, cut the death rate from over eighteen per cent to about one by ordering hand washing, and was rejected by his profession for the rest of his life.

What did Ignaz Semmelweis discover?

That doctors were carrying infection from the autopsy room to women in childbirth. His colleague Jakob Kolletschka died in 1847 of an infection from an autopsy cut that resembled puerperal fever, and that was the clue.

How much did handwashing reduce deaths under Ignaz Semmelweis?

The mortality rate in his clinic was 18.3 per cent in April 1847. He ordered washing in chlorinated lime in mid May. By June it was 2.2 per cent and by July 1.2 per cent. The figures are his own, recorded month by month.

Why was Ignaz Semmelweis rejected?

Two reasons. Doctors found the implication that they carried infection insulting, and germ theory had not yet been accepted, so he had a result with no mechanism to explain it. He was telling respected men they had caused deaths.

How did Ignaz Semmelweis die?

He suffered a breakdown in 1865, was committed to an asylum, and died fourteen days later of a gangrenous infection. He was forty seven. The cause of death was the kind of thing his life's work had been aimed at preventing.

Was Ignaz Semmelweis ever proved right?

Yes, but not in his lifetime. Louis Pasteur's work on germ theory and Joseph Lister's on antisepsis established the mechanism he had lacked, and vindicated a finding he had published in a book in 1861 and been ridiculed for.

What was Ignaz Semmelweis's biggest setback?

Being right and ignored. The profession refused the finding, he left Vienna for Pest, and he spent years in antagonistic correspondence with critics while mothers went on dying of something he had already shown how to prevent.

Where does this timeline of Ignaz Semmelweis's life come from?

From the public record. Character Arc drew every moment on this line from the sources listed at the foot of the page, and the kind and weight of each moment are our editorial reading. Ignaz Semmelweis isn't a Member of Character Arc and has no connection with it, and no feeling is attributed to him.

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Sources

Ignaz Semmelweis, English Wikipedia biography.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ignaz Semmelweis.
Semmelweis, Die Aetiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers, 1861.