Today, hand washing is a common habit among both doctors and ordinary people, but it has not always been so.

In 1850, the Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis climbed the podium of the conference room of the Medical Society of Vienna. It was a large and richly decorated hall, where many great discoveries in the field of medicine had been announced .

Ignaz Semmelweis. Photo: BBC

The evening of May 15, 1850, was no different — even if those present (and many others who read the story) did not acknowledge Semmelweis's discovery for decades.

What was the doctor's advice to his colleagues that night? It could be summed up in these words: "Wash your hands!"

Today, we expect doctors to wash their hands before consulting us or before an operation to prevent infections. Surprisingly, doctors did not realize the importance of this simple act until 1847.

Then Dr. Semmelweis began asking his colleagues at the Vienna General Hospital to wash their hands before attending births.

His request had no aesthetic reasons; it was a matter of life and death and helped prevent a deadly disease known as "puerperal fever" (from the Latin words for "child" and "parent").

In the middle of the 19th century, about five women out of a thousand died as a result of domestic births assisted by midwives. However, when doctors in the best hospitals in Europe and America were treating births, the mortality rate was 10 or 20 times higher.

The cause was invariably puerperal fever. And the death was horrible: high fever, pus flowing from the uterine canal, painful abscesses in the abdomen and chest and then sepsis and death - all just 24 hours after the birth of the child.

Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), “Agnew Clinic” (1889). Photo: Alamy

Today, the reason seems clear to us: the fact that hand washing is not practiced. Students and teachers at elite hospitals at the time began their day by performing autopsies on the bodies of women who had died the day before of puerperal fever.

Then they went to the salons and examined the women who were about to give birth. Ignaz Semmelweis was a brilliant doctor, but he had encountered two obstacles when he applied for a position at the General Hospital in Vienna in 1846: he was both a Jew and a Hungarian.

Medicine and surgery were considered the leading specialties in Vienna, but because of his background, Semmelweiss was delegated to work in the field of obstetrics.

But he became "immortal" because of his obsession with finding a way to end the puerperal fever that killed a third of his patients. (The hospital pavilion run by midwives, who did not perform autopsies, had much better results).

Every day, the doctor heard the women in his care asking them to be left at home, because they believed that the doctors were predicting death.

Fortunately, the doctor was smart enough to listen to his patients and discovered a simple and effective way to fight infections: hand washing.

Ignaz Semmelweiss made a crucial discovery, for which he was marginalized

The bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes ( seen under a microscope), the cause of puerperal fever. Photo: Wikimedia

The obstetrician made the vital observation that puerperal fever was caused by doctors transferring a kind of "morbid poison" from the dissected corpses in the autopsy room to the women about to give birth.

That morbid poison is known today as the bacterium called "Group A Hemolytic Streptococcus." He realized that washing his hands was the cure.

Historians remind us that Semmelweis was not the first doctor to realize this. For example, obstetrician Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen, Scotland, suggested in 1775 in his treatise on the epidemic of puerperal fever that midwives and doctors who had recently treated women with puerperal fever spread the disease to other women.

In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes , a Harvard anatomist and self-proclaimed "breakfast autocrat," published "The Degree of Contagion of Puerperal Fever," in which he noted that the disease was spread by doctors and recommended that obstetricians not perform autopsies on women who they had died of puerperal fever.

That being said, it was Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis who ordered students and novice doctors to wash their hands in a solution of lemon chlorine until the smell of dissected corpses was no longer detectable.

Shortly after the introduction of this rule in 1847, the mortality rate of the obstetric service decreased significantly.

Robert Thom (1915-1979), "Semmelweis - The Defender of Mothers" (1961). Photo: US National Library of Medicine

Unfortunately, the doctor's ideas were not accepted by all his colleagues. Many were outraged by the idea that they were the cause of the horrible deaths of their patients. As a result, Semmleweis met with enormous resistance and much criticism.

Being a difficult man, Semmelweis refused to publish the "obvious" findings until 13 years later, although those who supported him had asked him to publish them.

Even worse was the fact that he ugly insulted some of the hospital doctors who rejected his ideas. Such exits do not go unnoticed and unpunished in the corridors of academic medicine.

Hand washing is an uncomfortable habit for doctors of the time

Enrique Simonet Lombardo (1866–1927), “Autopsy” (1890), Museum of Malaga, Spain. Photo: Wikimedia

Becoming increasingly angry with every criticism leveled at him, Semmelweis lost his job at Vienna General Hospital and in 1850 left abruptly for his hometown, Budapest, without announcing his colleagues.

In 1861, he published his work "The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Puerperal Fever," in which he explained his theories about the disease, the method of preventing it from spreading by washing his hands, and a vitriol attack on all his critics.

The doctor's behavior became increasingly uncontrollable and he was interned in a madhouse on July 30, 1865. He died there, two weeks later, on August 13, 1865, at the age of 47.

Historians still debate the cause of the doctor's mental collapse and the cause of his death. During an operation, the doctor had contracted syphilis, which could explain his insanity.

Others believe he suffered from blood poisoning and sepsis while hospitalized in the asylum because of what could have been bipolar disorder . More recently, some have claimed that the doctor was suffering from Alzheimer's and that he had been beaten to death by asylum guards.

Ignaz Semmelweis's discovery came at an inopportune moment. He made his discovery between 1846 and 1861, long before the medical world was ready to accept it.

Today, in any school of medicine and public health, his name is spoken with respect whenever the crucial habit of washing hands is taught.

Unfortunately, in his time, he was ridiculed as an eccentric and was considered an angry and unstable man, who had to be removed from the medical profession.

The truth is that his detractors were wrong and he was right. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis paid a high price for dedicating his short and tried life to science and saving human lives.

Nearly 170 years after the publication of his revolutionary discoveries, it seems appropriate to recognize the importance of Dr. Semmelweis. But perhaps the gesture he would appreciate most would be simply washing his hands often and well.v