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annikarussell's review against another edition
5.0
Honestly surprised this isn’t a NYT bestseller. Very well written.
Not a book I would binge read - or even pick up in a bookstore on my own - but very happy I read it. The ending hit me particularly hard.
Not a book I would binge read - or even pick up in a bookstore on my own - but very happy I read it. The ending hit me particularly hard.
ruthiella's review against another edition
3.0
Read for an on-line "Book Menage". For further comments, please see http://www.citizenreader.com/citizen/2011/05/book-menage-day-5-the-wrap-up.html
peregrineace's review
4.0
Not an overly technical book, but a good story without too much hero worship to cloud the history involved. A quick but thorough read on the beginning of germ science in medicine, particularly the story of Ignac Semmelweis and the problems he both encountered and created when trying to implement hand-washing as standard hospital procedure. Very interesting and definitely worth the time.
sandyd's review
5.0
This was a short but gripping book - meticulously researched - describing the life of the Hungarian doctor who discovered that doctors, students, and midwives who washed their hands in a disinfectant wash had much, much lower rates of "childbed" or puerperial fever among their patients. (1 in 100 instead of 1 in 6!)
Nuland combines a strong understanding of the history of medicine and academia, how doctors interact professionally, and more than a bit of detective work. Several passages are horribly graphic, giving you just an inkling of what 19th c. hospitals were like and what puerperial fever did to a person.
Turns out many of the doctors and students sticking their hands into the vaginas of women in labor had just come from dissecting pus-ridden corpses. If that wasn't bad enough, unwashed sheets helped transfer infection.
Unfortunately, Semmelweis was such a difficult person and alienated so many people that he was unable to change routine practices in these hospitals. It wasn't until a couple of decades later that Pasteur & Lister showed the world germs in pus from corpses, and infection began to be understood.
Semmelweis suffered various professional and personal setbacks, and may have developed early-onset Alzheimer's. At any rate, he was admitted to a mental hospital in his early 50's, where he appears to have died as result of being beaten by the attendants.
Nuland combines a strong understanding of the history of medicine and academia, how doctors interact professionally, and more than a bit of detective work. Several passages are horribly graphic, giving you just an inkling of what 19th c. hospitals were like and what puerperial fever did to a person.
Turns out many of the doctors and students sticking their hands into the vaginas of women in labor had just come from dissecting pus-ridden corpses. If that wasn't bad enough, unwashed sheets helped transfer infection.
Unfortunately, Semmelweis was such a difficult person and alienated so many people that he was unable to change routine practices in these hospitals. It wasn't until a couple of decades later that Pasteur & Lister showed the world germs in pus from corpses, and infection began to be understood.
Semmelweis suffered various professional and personal setbacks, and may have developed early-onset Alzheimer's. At any rate, he was admitted to a mental hospital in his early 50's, where he appears to have died as result of being beaten by the attendants.
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