Sinclair, Sir William J.: Semmelweis. His Life and his Doctrine (Manchester, 1909)
II. Parentage and Nationality
IO UNIVERSITY EDUCATION Semmelweis repaired to Vienna and inscribed his name as a student of law at the University. This was in the autumn of 1837, when he was nineteen years old. But he was disappointed with his start in the study of law, and after accompanying a friend who was a student of medicine to hear a lecture on anatomy, he at once made up his mind as to his future profession; he believed that he was better fitted for the study of Natural Science and Medicine than for Law. So he registered as a student of medicine, and went through the usual courses. The second and third school-years he spent at the University of Pesth. He attended the routine courses of medical instruction, apparently in a rather perfunctory manner, for no one of the professors of the medical faculty of the time appears to have produced any lasting impression upon him. The remaining years of undergraduate study (1840— 1843) he passed in Vienna. It was then he made the acquaintance for the first time of Klein, Professor of Midwifery and Director of the First Obstetric Clinic attached to the great General Hospital. Semmelweis was a hard-working student and gave much attention to the clinical work of all the departments, but there was nothing asectic about his manner of life. He was always free from pecuniary embarrassment, and he is described by his friends äs a bright and jolly companion, and as a student lighthearted but industrious. There is much testimony to the effect that his medical student years were the happy time of his life, testimony perhaps unconsciously exaggerated to bring out by contrast with greater distinctness the gloom that was so soon to overtake him after his great discovery. On the 2nd of March, 1844, Semmelweis had passed all the examinations for the degree of doctor of medicine, including the disputation over a Latin dissertation entitled, curiously enough, “De vita plantarum.” When the day came for the conferring of degrees Semmelweis did not appear, and he sent no written apology. He had been suddenly summoned to Buda to the death-bed of
