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THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD: DR. SEMMELWEIS’ CASE STUDY
An example of the scientific method in action can be found in the work of Ignaz
Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor who lived in the early-to-mid-1800s. He was appointed to a ward in
Vienna’s most modern hospital, the Allegemeine Krankenhaus. He noticed that in his ward, patients
were dying at a rate that far exceeded that of the other wards, even the wards with much sicker patients.
Semmelweis observed the situation for several weeks, trying to figure out what was different about his
ward as compared to all others in the hospital. He finally determined that the only noticeable difference
was that his ward was the first one that the doctors and medical students visited after they performed
autopsies on the dead. Based on his observations, Semmelweis hypothesized that the doctors were
carrying something deadly from the corpses upon which the autopsies were being performed to the
patients in his ward.
In other words, Dr. Semmelweis exercised the first step in the scientific method. He made some
observations and then formed a hypothesis to explain those observations. Semmelweis then developed
a way to test his hypothesis. He instituted a rule that all doctors had to wash their hands after they
finished their autopsies and before they entered his ward. Believe it or not, up to that point in history,
doctors never thought to wash their hands before examining or even operating on a patient! Dr.
Semmelweis hoped that by washing their hands, doctors would remove whatever was being carried
from the corpses to the patients in his ward. He eventually required doctors to wash their hands after
examining each patient so that doctors would not carry something bad from a sick patient to a healthy
patient.
Although the doctors did not like the new rules, they grudgingly obeyed them, and the death
rate in Dr. Semmelweis’s ward decreased significantly! This, of course, was good evidence that his
hypothesis was correct. You would think that the doctors would be overjoyed. They were not. In fact,
they got so tired of having to wash their hands before entering Dr. Semmelweis’s ward that they
worked together to get him fired. His successor, anxious to win the approval of the doctors, rescinded
Semmelweis’s policy, and the death rate in the ward shot back up again. Semmelweis spent the rest of
his life doing more and more experiments to confirm his hypothesis that something unseen but
nevertheless deadly can be carried from a dead or sick person to a healthy person. Although
Semmelweis’s work was not appreciated until after his death, his hypothesis was eventually confirmed
by enough experiments that it became a scientific theory.
As time went on, more and more data were gathered in support of the theory. With the aid of
the microscope, scientists were able to characterize the deadly bacteria and germs that can be
transmitted from person to person, and the theory became a scientific law. Nowadays, doctors do all
that they can to completely sterilize their hands, clothes, and instruments before performing any
medical procedure.
5 BASIC STEPS OF
SCIENTIFIC METHOD USED APPLICATION
IN THIS CASE STUDY
In Allegemeine Krankenhaus, Dr. Semmelweis, a Hungarian
1. OBSERVATION physician, noted that patients were passing away at a rate that was
significantly higher than [Link] no or one of the waros.
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even the wards where the patients are substantially sicker. He
watched this for a few weeks while attempting to determine what
made his ward unique compared to all others in the hospital.
The purpose of the study is to determine what the primary reason for
2. STATEMENT OF THE the rising death rate in Dr. Semmelweis' unit is.
PROBLEM
The patients in his ward were being exposed to fatal illnesses and
bacteria that the doctors had picked up from the bodies that were the
3. HYPOTHESIS subject of the autopsy.
After finishing autopsies, Dr. Semmelweis established a rule
requiring all medical professionals to wash their hands before
4. EXPERIMENTATION entering his ward.
Dr. Semmelweis' patients died at a higher rate following the
5. CONCLUSION
experimentation donned nos decreesco
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