I could hear people whispering behind my back. "That stupid Hungarian doctor, Ignác Semmelweis, has made it compulsory for doctors to wash their hands with a chlorine solution before going to the maternity ward. He claims that it is the doctors who infect the patients when they go to the obstetrics department after an autopsy. What nonsense! The obstetrics clinic in Vienna has never seen anything like this, but it won’t tolerate any disobedience. Hand washing is mandatory. Every time, with a nail brush, up to the elbows.” It's 1847 and time to make some changes, and I'm only interested in results not gossip. Thanks to hand washing, many more women survive and leave the hospital alive with a new-born in their arms. Posterity will judge the rest.