The Streptococci
the streptococci that can cause uterine infection in women after childbirth. Most nineteenth-century women knew that they risked their lives by having their babies in the hospital, but some still did so. Viennese physician Ignaz Semmelweis noted in 1847 that women in a clinic staffed by medical personnel contracted childbed fever three times as frequently as those in a clinic staffed by midwives. On investigating, he found that doctors came directly from doing autopsies on women who had died from childbed fever to do pelvic examinations on women in labor. Semmelweis proposed that they were transmitting the causative agent and showed that infections were less frequent when examiners washed their hands in a bleach solution. Was he thanked for his wonderful discovery? No. He was dismissed from his post for suggesting that doctors were causing the deaths of patients. He became more and more frantic in his efforts to save the thousands of women who were dying unnecessarily, but he was ignored, and finally, at age forty-seven, he died in an insane asylum. Nowadays, we all accept the need for hygiene in hospitals, but when- ever it becomes lax, conditions are perfect for selecting for increased virulence, as in the virulent hospital-acquired (versus community- acquired) infantile diarrhea
