January 31, 2019 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Effectiveness of Calcium Hypochlorite as Hand Wash
The good doctor thought that since the
agent gets rid of the putrid vile smell of infected autopsy cadaveric tissues
it might perhaps also be able to destroy the “poisonous cadaverous molecules”
that was hypothetically being transmitted from the forensic rooms to the
maternity wards.
So he initiated the practice of hand
washing before entering the obstetrics ward with calcium hypochlorite.
With this simple act of cleaning hands with
calcium hypochlorite Semmelweis brought down the mortality rate of the first
clinic by an astonishing margin of 90%.
The statistics are telling.
In the April of 1847 the maternal mortality
rate was 18.43% which is a stupefying death of nearly 20 women for every 100
mothers in labor.
The hand washing was initiated in mid May
of the year of 1847 and the result of its effectiveness was manifest the very next
month.
The month of June saw a mortality rate of a
mere 2.2%.
In July it went further down to 1.2% though
in August it went slightly up to 1.9%.
The greatest feat and the unbelievable occurred
in the months that followed these where for the first time in the history of
these two obstetrics clinics the maternal death rate was zero!
How do you think this tremendous
achievement was viewed in those times by the medical fraternity?
You might expect that Semmelweis would have
been greeted with show and aplomb and awarded national Medal of Honor both by
the state and the Scientific Academy if there existed one.
Nothing of this sort happened.
Not only was his ideas ignored but also subjected
to rejection and ridicule.
Worse was to follow.
For political reasons Semmelweis was dismissed
from the hospital and began to be harassed by the medical community of the
Vienna.
The humiliation was so insufferable that eventually
Semmelweis was forced to leave Vienna and move to Budapest then under the House
of Hapsburg but soon to become Austria-Hungary thanks to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise
of 1867.
This deal to some extent re-established the
sovereignty of Kingdom of Hungary making it more of a partner of the Austrian
Empire than its subject.
It was indeed a very strange setting that would
be unacceptable in today’s times anywhere in the world.
Austria-Hungary would have one single
Monarch who in the Austrian half of the empire would be known as the Emperor of
Austria and who in the Kingdom of Hungary would be recognized as the King of
Hungary.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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