This was a short but gripping book - meticulously researched - describing the life of the Hungarian doctor who discovered that doctors, students, and midwives who washed their hands in a disinfectant wash had much, much lower rates of "childbed fever" (puerperal fever) among their patients - like1 in 100 instead of 1 in 6!).

Nuland combines a strong understanding of the history of medicine and academia, how doctors interact professionally, and more than a bit of detective work. Several passages are horribly graphic, giving you just an inkling of what 19th c. hospitals were like and what puerperal fever did to a person.

Turns out many of the doctors and students sticking their hands into women in labor had just come from dissecting pus-ridden corpses. If that wasn't bad enough, unwashed sheets helped transfer infection.

Unfortunately, Semmelweis was such a difficult person and alienated so many people that he was unable to change routine practices in these hospitals. It wasn't until a couple of decades later that Pasteur & Lister showed the world germs in pus from corpses, and infection began to be understood.

Semmelweis suffered various professional and personal setbacks, and may have developed early-onset Alzheimer's. At any rate, he was admitted to a mental hospital in his early 50's, where he appears to have died as result of being beaten by the attendants