The grunts and moans of pain filled the room as a woman was heard whimpering, sweating, before all movements paused. The doctors looked at the dead mother in pity, before taking her body for post mortem. She had come here for childbirth, she had given birth and now because of puerperal fever, she had lost her life. At least that was what Dr. Semmelweis had to report, even though he knew that something else was at play.

Dr. Semmelweis was an assistant to Professor Johann Klein and his duties included to examine patients every morning, to supervise difficult deliveries, to teach students in obstetrics and be a clerk to the records. His position would be close to the modern day equivalent of a chief assistant in the United States.

Somehow, every mother he examined would mysteriously catch fever and die. Rows of hospital beds would have dead bodies lying around. The hospital authorities had blamed it on the sanitation of the public, hygiene issues, wrath of God, dehydrated mothers, them catching infection outside of the hospital but somehow, the second clinic, where the midwives took care of the mothers, this did not happen at all. There, the mothers did not even catch the fever, let alone dying from it.

At the time, mothers used to be admitted to the first clinic or the second one on alternate days, based on the day of delivery. Dr. Semmelweis was not the only doctor who killed every mother he helped in childbirth. With a sigh, he took his scalpel and other equipment, opening up the now dead body which filled the entire room with a rotting smell.

He put his nose in his elbow but it still stunk. His hands were elbow deep in the cadaver juice. He had tried everything, everything in his rational thinking to figure out what was the problem between the two clinics. Why did entire rows of patients with mothers just die of postpartum infection? Mothers preferred to have their babies delivered in the streets than coming to this clinic and then admitting to the second clinic the next day since the placements were alternate days. Still, they would not have this fever. What could be dirtier than the streets? He wiped his forehead sweat by his elbow and immediately felt nauseous. Why did this have to stink that badly?

The second clinic was more overcrowded. So, the problem was not that because the first clinic was overcrowded and that it caused spread of infection from one person to another because then that should happen more in the second clinic.

The second clinic was of midwives who instructed the mothers to lay on their sides and give birth instead of on their back. He instructed his students to do the same but that did not help either.

The only difference was that the second clinic did not use medical equipment at that time. Yes, the forceps from the first clinic did cause some tissue damage but it was not as bad as the experience of childbirth.

He could not figure out the difference between the two clinics. Was this what his fate was? To see healthy women who came to his clinic die because they were his patients? Nothing seemed to be working. He could not figure out why the infection was happening.

And even if it came to treating the infection, the available knowledge was not helping. Fevers were caused by an imbalance in the body's four humours. No matter how much they tried to do bloodletting, that did not help at all. The mothers would succumb to death anyways.

"Dr. Semmelweis, Dr. Kolletschka's dead body is here. Here are the reports."

Dr. Semmelweis was vexed. Kolletschka was Dr. Semmelweis' friend. He died after he was poked with a student's scalpel while doing a post mortem examination. Dr. Semmelweis went through the report tiredly, wanting to throw it away already. Why did this have to happen with Kolletschka out of all people?

However, as he went through the report, he was appalled. To his students' surprise, he took off, running to look at his friend's body. What he found was appalling. The insides of his friend were the same as the insides of the several mothers he had cut open. His friend had died from the same infection that his patients died from. So, it had nothing to do with childbirth.

This gave him a new direction to think in. Yes, it all made sense now. His nose went to his elbows as he inhaled the gunk and the bodily fluids he had from the cadaver he had just opened up. Something had seeped into his sleeves and if not for his friend, this gunk would be inside another woman for another delivery again and like an idiot, he had thought that the infection and the smell was from breastmilk rotting inside the mother like other doctors did.

This explained the bad fatality rate of mothers from this clinic in recent years. After all, the first clinic was not always like this. Besides, the forceps he would use for helping to reposition the head of the babies would also be forceps going inside cadavers for post mortem. The midwives from the second clinic did not deal with cadavers and therefore, the mothers there did not face any such thing.

Professor Johann Klein ran both the clinics. However, his predecessor Professor Boer was a huge fan of the English way of cleaning. Unlike Austrian hospitals, English hospitals used to have their floors, bedsheets, and equipment regularly cleaned. Likewise, Professor Boer used to follow the same routine and during his time, the post maternity fatality rate was less than 1%. After he was succeeded by Professor Klein though, the system was replaced with minimal sanitization because the imbalance of humours caused diseases. They just had to keep the clinics bearable, no need to make it sparkly clean.

Armed with his new knowledge, Dr. Semmelweis arranged for new washbasins for his medical students, "I need you all to try something to help with the cases of the puerperal fever. I need you all to wash your hands properly with this chlorine lime solution instead of the normal soap and water."

However, that did not help a lot. Because of his smell, he realised that the cadaver matter used to still be there, even if he did one post mortem and proceeded to do one checking. So, he told the students their next instruction, "You need to wash your hands with this solution after checking every patient."

A student said what other patients were thinking, "Doctor, your last experiment did not pass at all and this chlorine smell is not exactly easy on the nose. First the cadaver and now this chlorine smell. On what basis are you making us do all this?"

Dr. Semmelweis felt appalled as he said, surprised, "I understand that you think this is inconvenient but you see, the clinic is facing a flood of dead bodies of mothers. They come here to bring a new life in the world, not to have their lives taken. The situation is so bad that mothers prefer to give birth on the streets and then go to the second clinic for their post maternity care and you know what? Still they don't die as much from infection as mothers admitted here. Every life you take, she is not only a daughter, a sister, a wife but remember, she has also become a mother. We don't only take away a woman from her relatives but we also snatch a mother from an infant. So, we have to do something to overcome this. You smell this?"

He put his wrist near the student's nose as the student immediately stepped back. Dr. Semmelweis said passionately, "This is why I am telling you to wash your hands after checking every patient, I am going to tell the nurses to change the bedsheets and keep separate equipment for mothers and for cadavers than the still alive mothers, to clean the forceps and other equipment before they use them on every patient."

Dr. Semmelweis stormed off as the students looked at each other and shrugged, rolling their eyes and groaning, going about their ways. The days went on as the situation improved. The percentage of fatality because of puerperal fever had dropped significantly. However, his senior Prof. Klein was not too happy with this as he used to get complaints from the students about the constant hand washing.

Dr. Semmelweis was told by people, "You know, the way you nobody listens to you, no matter what, you should leave this job and publish a paper on your theory."

Dr. Semmelweis shook his head and said, "No, I am teaching students here, students from around the world and these students of mine will move all over the world and save the lives of so many people."

Because of the hospital's internal politics, Dr. Semmelweis' research was disregarded because what was he talking about? There was nothing in the cadaver except the smell. The data of the fatality of mothers was disregarded when the Austrian monarchy was challenged by the Hungarian students, mostly medical students in which Dr. Semmelweis' brother took part in. He was Hungarian so that did not really help his case. Dr. Semmelweis was therefore dismissed from the Vienna hospital and thus, the statistics of post maternal deaths started to increase again.

The medical community did not believe Dr. Semmelweis because they tried his hypothesis, washing hands with chlorine lime solution daily but that did not help much and his theory of the involvement of cadaver with the fever was dismissed, simply because they did not read his book clearly and only decided to act on the rumours of his solution.

Dr. Semmelweis would not be believed till the germ theory was proposed and Louis Pasteur confirmed that germs did exist, thus telling the world that Dr. Semmelweis was right, something was in the cadaver, in his hands, which gave fatal fever to so many mothers.

Gustav Adolf Michaelis, a German doctor, responded that Semmelweis' methods used to work but committed suicide soon after, because he realized how many people he had killed by his ignorance, which he could avoid with a few simple steps, including his cousin who he had examined after she had given birth.

This truth was so big that he could not bear the consequences of the lie and the thing about such truths is that, the lies are so convincing, going on since centuries, about the four humours, about bloodletting, that nobody believes the truth and when they do, they cannot bear the consequences of the lie and the weight of the truth on their conscience. Their guilt eats them alive.

This short story was a tribute to Dr. Semmelweis, who died from the same strain of streptococcus infection which he had spent his entire life battling and then he died in 1865 in a mental asylum, because nobody was ready to hear the truth. This tribute was necessary because like we pasteurise our milk, doctors don't semmelwise their hands. He was not given enough credit, which led to him losing control over his mental health and nobody, not his kids, not his wife, nobody attended his funeral. He was so passionate about saving patients, about proper procedure that he used to go off on people not doing their job properly, like throwing a handkerchief with cadaver fluid on the hospital management he was working when they chose a cheaper laundry service, who did not wash the bedsheets at all to provide the cheap services. He was passionate about what he did and that led to his downfall.