Houses of Birth and Houses of Death

Listen to this Interview: http://www.classical89.org/thinkingaloud/past.asp?d=5/8/2008

It may be hard to believe today, but there was a time when young doctors walked straight from their research in the morgue to the delivery room. Childbed fever killed more than a million women in nineteenth century Europe. Modern medicine, and most people born today, owe much to the pioneering work of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis. We're talking with K. Codell Carter about his book Childbed Fever: A Scientific Biography of Ignaz Semmelweis.