The Tragedy of Childbed Fever by Irvine Loudon, Oxford University Press,
£40, ISBN 019820499X
CHILDBIRTH can be a source of great fear as well as great joy. Nowadays few
women risk death in hospital from “puerperal” or childbed fever. But it was once
a grim reality striking the healthy and wealthy as well as the sick in what
should have been safe surroundings. It was a risk of delivery.
Mention puerperal fever and the name of Ignaz Semmelweis leaps to mind. This
young Hungarian physician who worked in Vienna’s main hospital in the mid-19th
century was appalled by the carnage…
