Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)

Semmelweis's Birthplace - the Home of the Museum

leagues took him home. Professor Balassa, Bókaÿ and Wägñer, the most eminent professors of the University of Pest examined him. On July 3rd 1865 he was admitted to Vienna and placed in the care of an asylum. He was accompanied there by Professor Hebra. He wanted to walk out but was restrained. Hardly a fortnight later on August 13th 1865 Ignác Semmelweis died. The immediate cause of his death was that some days before the faculty meeting he had cut the middle finger of his right hand, apparently while performing an operation. The wound became suppurated, his arm inflamed, he suffered from paroxysm. The process spread over his whole organism. The autopsy record stated pyaemia (sepsis). His early death was actually caused by the same infection that parturients had been died of. Parturients, for whom he had been struggling in all of his life. This is the real tragedy of Semmelweis's passionate and restless life. ' There were three entirely independent phases in the mental illness of Semmelweis. The first, that of psychopathia, culminated around 1861 but never developed into insanity. The second phase was a chronic degeneration of the nervous system, probably paralysis. It progressed in gradual stages from 1861 onwards and became acute in the summer of 1865. The third phase, the acute infectious mental disturbance was due to a neglected osteomyelitis which developed in the mental hospital in Vienna. His death was caused by pyaemia.' — wrote the historian Professor István Benedek in 1974. The significance of Semmelweis's discovery transcended obstetrics. It had its effects on surgery and medicine in general. His discovery was completely verified by the rise of bacteriology, through the activities of Pasteaur and Koch. There was a long discussion in medical literature about the priority of the work of the American Holmes, the English Joseph Lister and Semmelweis. No doubt, it was Lister, who introduced the use of carbolic acid spray in surgery in order to destroy pyogenic germs. Semmelweis on the other hand stressed the significance of the prophylaxis of infection. Each scientific discovery has its predecessors, and numerous parallels can be discovered in the proposed methods. But the question of priority at the basic question, the discovery of the fact that puerperal fever and sepsis are one and the same cannot be dubious, it was undoubtedly a conclusion of Semmelweis's genius. Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis is the greatest international authority of Hungarian medicine. His birthplace, the seat of the Medical Historical Museum is a worthy memorial of the great man. His life and work, birth an death, struggles and achievements inspire everyone who enter this house and they make it a place of pilgrimage for those who fight for human and scientific ideals. 24