A disturbing trend existed in the mid-19th century when it came to maternity clinics and child birth. New mothers were dying in alarming numbers due to a mysterious ailment referred to at the time as, “childbed fever.”

A Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis, who was working in a Vienna, Austria maternity, who began to notice and question this shocking trend in 1847.  As he delved deeper into the statistics on maternity fatalities, he began to raise questions on medical practices that had been accepted for decades. Find out more on this episode of the Missing Chapter!

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