Summary Of The Doctor's Plague

Book Review: The Doctor’s Plague The Doctor’s Plague, written by Sherwin B. Nuland, chronicles the fatalities, ignorance, disdain, and the eradication that childbed fever brought in the 19th and 20th century. Specifically, Nuland shows the progression of Ignác Semmelweis, the ‘research’ he did on childbed fever and his oppressors who were reluctant to believe the results. The book opens with a story of a woman pregnant, ready to give birth. She eventually is in labor and delivers in the hospital nearest to her, Allgemeine Krankenhaus in Vienna, Austria. Through her detailed and gruesome delivery, we sympathize with her and, as we know what the book is about, we pray she doesn’t die of childbed fever, but reluctantly she dies and leaves her
Semmelweis eventually was given an advisor position at a hospital and implemented a rule that people were to wash their hands in a tub of chlorine water and change their clothes between the pathological anatomy in the morning and when they went to see patients. This helped the fatalities drop significantly from 81% down to as low as 1.2% where his method had been implemented and religiously followed. Even still with this proven observation, other doctors were still opposed to the idea they were the problem, and would not try Semmelweis’ method. After being fired from his job, Semmelweis moved back to Buda Pest from Vienna and didn’t pursue his studies much more. The book concludes with the last days of Semmelweis’ life, which, ironically, seemed to end with the disease that he had been trying to prevent throughout his professional life. He went insane the last two years of his life, possible Alzheimer’s presenile dementia, and was taken to a mental hospital by his wife Maria, where he died of a terrible infection.
Semmelweis did write down what his hypothesis was and the results he found but couldn’t publish it because it made no sense to anyone else who would read it. The information was all over the place and was not clear to convey to others. Had Semmelweis been able to write down his observations,
Using the elements opening, challenge, action, and resolution, Nuland exposes the problem of childbed fever through the heart-breaking story of a woman dying after giving birth. This is the challenge that Nuland is addressing including the progression of Semmelweis and his ‘research’. The action is toward the end when Semmelweis unexpectedly flies home to Buda Pest from Vienna, and the book concludes from there with the resolution of him dying. Since Semmelweis does not do proper experimentation like one would in the scientific process, there is no scientific process for Nuland to convey to his readers. However, Nuland does properly address, in order, Semmelweis’ discoveries and what he does to ‘test’ his observations, though he doesn’t perform a proper experiment, Nuland forms it into an experimental form very well for the