A Revisionist View of the Semmelweis Story

Constance Putnam, Ph.D., is a medical history researcher and writer. She has spent several years reviewing the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a nineteenth-century Hungarian physician and leading proponent of antisepsis. Problematizing a story that many historians think they know is a complex and special challenge, though there is evidence that Semmelweis was more than the ¿hand-washing guy.¿ He had a very full, though brief, career as part of a vital and impressive medical community ¿ a part of the tale that is generally ignored.