A Deadly Mystery
In the 1840s, a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis made a chilling discovery.
At the Vienna General Hospital, where he worked, women were dying at an alarming rate from childbed fever – a brutal infection that killed one in three mothers after childbirth.
Doctors had plenty of theories. Some thought it was bad air floating through the hospital. Others believed it was an imbalance of bodily fluids. Some even thought it was God’s judgment.
Semmelweis, however, wasn’t convinced. So he did something radical: he started paying attention.