Chapter 4. The Problem beneath Other Problems
“Have you ever heard of Ignaz Semmelweis?” he asked. (He pronounced it “Ignawtz Semelvice.”)
“No, I don’t think so. Is it a sickness or something?”
“No, no,” Bud said with a chuckle. “But close. Semmelweis was a European doctor, an obstetrician, in the mid-1800s. He worked at Vienna’s General Hospital, an important research hospital, where he tried to get to the bottom of a horrendous mortality rate among women in the maternity ward. In the section of the ward where Semmelweis practiced, the mortality rate was one in ten. Think of it. One in every ten women giving birth there died! Can you imagine?”
“I wouldn’t have let my wife near the place,” I said.
“You wouldn’t have been alone. Vienna General had ...
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