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The Doctors' Plague

Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis

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About this listen

Surgeon, scholar, best-selling author, Sherwin B. Nuland tells the strange story of Ignác Semmelweis with urgency and the insight gained from his own studies and clinical experience.

Ignác Semmelweis is remembered for the now-commonplace notion that doctors must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-19th century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea. With deaths from childbed fever exploding, Semmelweis discovered that doctors themselves were spreading the disease. While his simple reforms worked immediately - childbed fever in Vienna all but disappeared - they brought down upon Semmelweis the wrath of the establishment, and led to his tragic end.

©2003 Sherwin B. Nuland (P)2020 Tantor Biological Sciences Biology History History & Commentary History & Philosophy Medical Medicine & Health Care Industry Professionals & Academics Science World Medicine
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The delivery of the narrator has ruined an otherwise well written book. I would have given it no stars out of 5 if it were possible. I persevered with the book as I wanted to hear the content but the deliver of this text could not have been worse. For a time I wondered if it was a human voice or a computer generated one. There is no appropriate inflection, no intonation, no relevant emotion in the entire piece. I could have done a better job myself.

I won't be listening to anything else that Peter Lerman has narrated.

The worst narration I have ever come across.

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