József Marastoni (1834-1895): Professors of the Medical Faculty at the Royal Hungarian University of Science in 1863. 1863 (lithography)
Following his studies in Pest and Vienna, Semmelweis worked as an Assistant Professor in the 1st Gynaecological Clinic in the imperial capital of Vienna until March 1849. It was here in May 1847 that he devised his thesis on the origin of childbed fever, discovering that it was not an infection that occurred and spread independently, but one caused by the degradation of organic materials, which was in fact passed on by medical personnel to the women in their care. His observations were based on statistical research, namely the difference in perinatal mortality between two departments of obstetrics, one attended by medical students who participated in autopsies and another staffed by midwifery students who did not perform autopsies. He pointed out that the symptoms of childbed fever are identical to those of sepsis. He ordered the introduction of thorough hand-washing with chlorinated lime as an infection control and prevention measure. However, he only gave a single lecture on his results and later tried to disseminate his findings to a wider audience via correspondence. He published his first article on the subject in Hungarian in 1858 and his main treatise in German was only published in 1861. In 1851 he became a senior physician in the department of obstetrics at Rókus hospital in Pest. Later, in 1855, he began teaching as a Professor of Obstetrics at the University of Pest and simultaneously led the Obstetrics Clinic at Újvilág Street where not a single woman died due to childbed fever in the period of 1860–1861.
