MEA CULPA & The Life and Work of Semmelweis

MEA CULPA & The Life and Work of Semmelweis PDF Author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Coming just after his masterpieces Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan, Mea Culpa is Céline's scathing denunciation of Soviet communism, written after a personal visit to that "worker's paradise" in the 1930s. In his inimitable, blistering style, Céline strips bare not only the communist experiment but also all other modern systems, showing them for what they are: illusions destined to fail because they are based on false ideas about the nature of Man. At a time when many other writers and intellectuals were fawning over the Soviet Union and the ideas of Marx and Lenin, Céline was quick to see them for what they really were, and Mea Culpa now stands as a prescient and accurate statement about the true nature of communism in the modern world. Also included in this volume is The Life and Work of Semmelweis, Céline's first book. This meditation on the heroic and tragic physician who pioneered antisepsis in medicine gives us a key to understanding Céline's vision of life and all of his subsequent work. Written in a more conventional style than his later books, Céline's genius for trenchant observation is nonetheless fully apparent.

MEA CULPA & The Life and Work of Semmelweis

MEA CULPA & The Life and Work of Semmelweis PDF Author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Coming just after his masterpieces Journey to the End of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan, Mea Culpa is Céline's scathing denunciation of Soviet communism, written after a personal visit to that "worker's paradise" in the 1930s. In his inimitable, blistering style, Céline strips bare not only the communist experiment but also all other modern systems, showing them for what they are: illusions destined to fail because they are based on false ideas about the nature of Man. At a time when many other writers and intellectuals were fawning over the Soviet Union and the ideas of Marx and Lenin, Céline was quick to see them for what they really were, and Mea Culpa now stands as a prescient and accurate statement about the true nature of communism in the modern world. Also included in this volume is The Life and Work of Semmelweis, Céline's first book. This meditation on the heroic and tragic physician who pioneered antisepsis in medicine gives us a key to understanding Céline's vision of life and all of his subsequent work. Written in a more conventional style than his later books, Céline's genius for trenchant observation is nonetheless fully apparent.

Childbed Fever

Childbed Fever PDF Author: K. Codell Carter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313388385
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
In the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of women died each year from childbed fever. The Carters describe birthing conditions and medical practices in Vienna during the time when young Semmelweis began to work in a maternity clinic there. He discovered that childbed fever arose because medical personnel did not wash adequately after dissecting corpses before doing vaginal examinations of women in labor. After he required students to disinfect themselves, the mortality rate immediately dropped. However, Semmelweis's views were not accepted by the senior physicians who believed the disease was due to a variety of causes. After strident attempts to persuade skeptics, Semmelweis was committed to a Viennese insane asylum where he died at age 42, possibly from beatings by asylum guards. Childbed fever, now called puerperal infection, continues to be a leading cause of maternal mortality, in spite of the best efforts of modern physicians.

The Life and Work of Semmelweiss

The Life and Work of Semmelweiss PDF Author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Publisher: Atlas Press LLC
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Celine is best known for his early novels Journey to the End of the Night (1932) and Death on the Instalment Plan (1936), but this delirious, fanatical and unreasonable account of the life of Semmelweiss predates them both. Ignacz Semmelweiss (1818-1865) was a doctor, now regarded as the father of the cure to antisepsis. His fellow doctors rejected both his reasoning and his methods, thereby causing many thousands of deaths in maternity wards across Europe. While originally written as a thesis towards his medical doctorate in 1924, it was not published until 1936.

Childbed Fever

Childbed Fever PDF Author: K. Codell Carter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351529080
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 149

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Book Description
The life and work of Ignaz Semmelweis is among the most engaging and moving stories in the history of science. Childbed Fever makes the Semmelweis story available to a general audience, while placing his life, and his discovery, in the context of his times. In 1846 Vienna, as what would now be called a head resident of obstetrics, Semmelweis confronted the terrible reality of childbed fever, which killed prodigious numbers of women throughout Europe and America. In May 1847 Semmelweis was struck by the realization that, in his clinic, these women had probably been infected by the decaying remains of human tissue. He believed that infection occurred because medical personnel did not wash their hands thoroughly after conducting autopsies in the morgue. He immediately began requiring everyone working in his clinic to wash their hands in a chlorine solution. The mortality rate fell to about one percent. While everyone at the time rejected his account of the cause of the disease because his theory was fundamentally inconsistent with existing medical beliefs about how diseases were transmitted, in time Semmelweis was proven to be correct. His work led to the adoption of a new way of thinking about disease, thus helping to create an entirely new theory - the etiological standpoint - that still dominates medicine today.

Genius Belabored

Genius Belabored PDF Author: Theodore G. Obenchain
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817319298
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
The fascinating story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a nineteenth-century obstetrician ostracized for his strident advocacy of disinfection as a way to prevent childbed fever In Genius Belabored: Childbed Fever and the Tragic Life of Ignaz Semmelweis, Theodore G. Obenchain traces the life story of a nineteenth-century Hungarian obstetrician who was shunned and marginalized by the medical establishment for advancing a far-sighted but unorthodox solution to the appalling mortality rates that plagued new mothers of the day. In engrossing detail, Obenchain recreates for readers the sights, smells, and activities within a hospital of that day. In an era before the acceptance of modern germ science, physicians saw little need for cleanliness or hygiene. As a consequence, antiseptic measures were lax and rudimentary. Especially vulnerable to contamination were new mothers, who frequently contracted and died from childbed fever (puerperal fever). Genius Belabored follows Semmelweis’s awakening to the insight that many of these deaths could be avoided with basic antiseptic measures like hand washing. The medical establishment, intellectually unprepared for Semmelweis’s prescient hypothesis, rejected it for a number of reasons. It was unorthodox and went against the lingering Christian tradition that the dangers of childbirth were inherent to the lives of women. Complicating matters, colleagues did not consider Semmelweis an easy physician to work with. His peers described him as strange and eccentric. Obenchain offers an empathetic and insightful argument that Semmelweis suffered from bipolar disorder and illuminates how his colleagues, however dedicated to empirical science they might have been, misjudged Semmelweis’s methods based upon ignorance and their emotional discomfort with him. In Genius Belabored, Obenchain identifies Semmelweis’s rightful place in the pantheon of scientists and physicians whose discoveries have saved the lives of millions. Obenchain’s biography of Semmelweis offers unique insights into the practice of medicine and the mindsets of physicians working in the premodern era. This fascinating study offers much of interest to general readers as well as those interested in germ theory, the history of medicine and obstetrics, or anyone wishing to better understand the trajectory of modern medicine.

The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis (Great Discoveries)

The Doctors' Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis (Great Discoveries) PDF Author: Sherwin B. Nuland
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039332625X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 203

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Book Description
A narrative of one of the key turning points in medical history.

Semmelweis His Life and Doctrine [electronic Resource]

Semmelweis His Life and Doctrine [electronic Resource] PDF Author: Sir William J Sinclair
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781019702864
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Ignaz Semmelweis was a pioneering physician in the 19th century who discovered the importance of hand hygiene in preventing the spread of infectious diseases. This fascinating biography by William J. Sinclair traces Semmelweis' life and work, exploring the social, cultural, and scientific contexts that shaped his ideas and achievements. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Mea Culpa & The Life and Work of Semmelweis

Mea Culpa & The Life and Work of Semmelweis PDF Author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description


Mea Culpa and the Life and Work of Semmelweis

Mea Culpa and the Life and Work of Semmelweis PDF Author: Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Publisher: Howard Fertig
ISBN: 9780865272767
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever

The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever PDF Author: Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299093648
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Semmelweis's exposure to the childbed fever was concurrent with his appointment to the Vienna maternity hospital in 1846. Like many similar hospitals and clinics in the major cities of nineteenth-century Europe and America, where death rates from the illness sometimes climbed as high as 40 percent of admitted patients, the Viennese wards were ravaged by the fever. Intensely troubled by the tragic and baffling loss of so many young mothers, Semmelweis sought answers. The Etiology was testimony to his success. Based on overwhelming personal evidence, it constituted a classic description of a disease, its causes, and its prevention. It also allowed a necessary response to the obstetrician's already vocal, rabid, and perhaps predictable critics. For Semmelweis's central thesis was a startling one - the fever, he correctly surmised, was caused not by epidemic or endemic influences but by unsterilized and thus often contaminated hands of the attending physicians themselves.