Resumen de Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809--1894) and Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818--1865): Preventing the Transmission of Puerperal Fever.

Hilary J. Lane, Nava Blum, Elizabeth Fee

• The article examines the public health works of physicians Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis in preventing the transmission of puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever. Holmes graduated from Harvard in 1836 and published the booklet "Puerperal Fever, As a Private Pestilence" in 1855. He reported that puerperal fever was transmitted to patients by physicians with unwashed hands. Semmelweis graduated from the University of Vienna in 1844 and published the book "The Etiology, Concept, and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever" in 1861. Semmelweis found a relationship between childbed fever and physicians who failed to wash their hands after autopsies.