Drag each item to the correct location to compare the two clinics.
ignatz Semmelweis was appalled. The Vienna hospital where he worked was world famous for its obstetrics department,1 but women would rather give birth outside on the street. It was safer.2 Inside, more of them died of childbed fever, especially if they were put in First Clinic. The two maternity wards or clinics accepted patients on alternate days, but whenever their babies arrived, mothers begged to be put in Second Clinic. The death rate there was lower.3 Childbed (or puerperal) fever was a bacterial infection common in nineteenth-century hospitals and even after doctor-assisted home births. It tore through the reproductive systems and blood streams of women exhausted by childbirth. In America, oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. announced in 1843 that the disease was carried on the unwashed hands and clothes of doctors, but he was largely ignored.4 In 1847, Semmelweis came to the same conclusion. As assistant to Professor Johann Klein, he was put in charge of First Clinic and found the patients were right about it. His ward’s 1841-1846 death rate was 9.92 percent, compared to 3.88 percent in Second Clinic.5 Was it because of miasma? No. The two clinics were under the same roof and shared an anteroom; all patients breathed the same air. Overcrowding? No. Second Clinic was more crowded. Semmelweis ruled out one hypothesis after another.6
First Clinic or Second Clinic
9.92 percent death rate
Midwives worked there
3.88 percent death rate
Less crowded
Medical students who did autopsies worked there
more crowded
First Clinic
- 9.92 percent death rate
- Midwives worked there
- Medical students who did autopsies worked there
Second Clinic
- 3.88 percent death rate
- Less crowded