Tag: puerperal fever
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Can behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia salvage Semmelweis?
Faraze A. Niazi Jack E. Riggs Morgantown, West Virginia, United States Ignaz Semmelweis. 1818 – 1865. Age 47 years at death. Via Wikimedia. Remember me for the mind I had; not the mind a disease created. Few physicians have made a more significant observation than did Ignaz Semmelweis.1 In 1847 he took over two…
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Leaders in the development of Western obstetric practice
Sara Buck The history of obstetrics contains too many notable figures to simply select six key leaders in its development. However, as Laura Kaplan notes in “Changes in Childbirth in the US,” featured in the current issue, modern obstetrics has been greatly influenced by the invention and modernization of the forceps (Chamberlen and Smellie), the…
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Alexander Gordon and puerperal fever
C. John ScottAberdeen, Scotland The epidemic of childbed (puerperal) fever that struck the city of Aberdeen, Scotland, between December 1789 and March 1792 was unusual. It occurred not in the dirty, crowded, and ill-ventilated wards of lying-in hospitals, but throughout the city and surrounding villages. Serendipitously, one doctor cared for most of the patients. This…