Genius Belabored

Childbed Fever and the Tragic Life of Ignaz Semmelweis
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8173-6033-7
Verlag: The University of Alabama Press

Buch, Englisch, 264 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Genius Belabored is the fascinating story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a nineteenth-century obstetrician ostracized for his strident advocacy of disinfection as a way to prevent childbed fever, a leading cause of mortality in new mothers.

In Genius Belabored: Childbed Fever and the Tragic Life of Ignaz Semmelweis, Theodore G. Obenchain traces the life story of a nineteenth-century Hungarian obstetrician who was shunned and marginalized by the medical establishment for advancing a far-sighted but unorthodox solution to the appalling mortality rates that plagued new mothers of the day.
 
In engrossing detail, Obenchain recreates for readers the sights, smells, and activities within a hospital of that day. In an era before the acceptance of modern germ science, physicians saw little need for cleanliness or hygiene. As a consequence, antiseptic measures were lax and rudimentary. Especially vulnerable to contamination were new mothers, who frequently contracted and died from childbed fever (puerperal fever). Genius Belabored follows Semmelweis’s awakening to the insight that many of these deaths could be avoided with basic antiseptic measures like hand washing.
 
The medical establishment, intellectually unprepared for Semmelweis’s prescient hypothesis, rejected it for a number of reasons. It was unorthodox and went against the lingering Christian tradition that the dangers of childbirth were inherent to the lives of women. Complicating matters, colleagues did not consider Semmelweis an easy physician to work with. His peers described him as strange and eccentric. Obenchain offers an empathetic and insightful argument that Semmelweis suffered from bipolar disorder and illuminates how his colleagues, however dedicated to empirical science they might have been, misjudged Semmelweis’s methods based upon ignorance and their emotional discomfort with him.
 
In Genius Belabored, Obenchain identifies Semmelweis’s rightful place in the pantheon of scientists and physicians whose discoveries have saved the lives of millions. Obenchain’s biography of Semmelweis offers unique insights into the practice of medicine and the mindsets of physicians working in the premodern era. This fascinating study offers much of interest to general readers as well as those interested in germ theory, the history of medicine and obstetrics, or anyone wishing to better understand the trajectory of modern medicine.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of Figures
- Introduction
- 1. Puerperal Fever
- 2. Prodrome: Birth to Medical School
- 3. Old School; New School
- 4. Vienna General Hospital
- 5. Puerperal Fever Theories
- 6. Assistantship
- 7. Enlightenment
- 8. Revolution
- 9. Semmelweis Speaks
- 10. Budapest
- 11. Aetiology
- 12. Reaction to Aetiology
- 13. Open Letters
- 14. Illness and Descent
- 15. Lower Austrian Mental Asylum
- 16. Resurrection
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Theodore G. Obenchain is a retired neurosurgeon with several surgical instrument patents in his name and is the author of The Victorian Vivisection Debate: Francis Power Cobbe, Experimental Science, and the “Claims of Brutes,” as well as numerous professional journal articles.