Publisher Description
Surgeon, scholar, bestselling author, Sherwin B. Nuland tells the strange story of Ignác Semmelweis with urgency and the insight gained from his own studies and clinical experience.
Ignác Semmelweis is remembered for the now-commonplace notion that doctors must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-nineteenth-century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea. With deaths from childbed fever exploding, Semmelweis discovered that doctors themselves were spreading the disease. While his simple reforms worked immediately—childbed fever in Vienna all but disappeared—they brought down upon Semmelweis the wrath of the establishment, and led to his tragic end.
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About Sherwin B. Nuland
Sherwin B. Nuland, MD, is clinical
professor of surgery at Yale, where he also teaches bioethics and medical
history. In addition to his numerous articles for medical publications, he has
written for the New Yorker, New Republic, New York Times, Time, and
New York Review of Books. He writes a
regular column for American Scholar
entitled The Uncertain Art. He lives in Connecticut with his family.
About Peter Lerman
Peter Lerman is a native of New York City—born and raised in Brooklyn—and currently resides in Connecticut. He has narrated nearly 150 titles, primarily nonfiction. His diverse, peripatetic vocational background and love of exploring the variety of cultures around him have resulted in singular insights and experiences. In 2020 he won an Audiofile Magazine Earphones Award. To date he has recorded eight works by Upton Sinclair, including his 1960 autobiography.