How a Hungarian Physician Saved Women from Childbed Fever and Became the ‘Savior of Mothers’

Guest: Anthony Valerio, editor, teacher, and author of “Semmelweis” Washing your hands isn’t just the best way to prevent COVID-19 in 2020—it was also the rallying cry of Ignaz Semmelweis, a young Hungarian doctor trying to end the scourge of childbed fever and lower maternal mortality rates in the 1840s, well before germ theory entered scientific thought.