Sherwin Nuland The Doctor's Plague Summary

Marshal Brooks Simmons

Book Review 1

September 29, 2016

Kensinger: ENG A213

A Book Review of Sherwin Nuland: The Doctors’ Plague

Written by Marshal Brooks Simmons

In the book The Doctor’s plague, author Sherwin Nuland writes about a physician assistant in the 1840’s figured about germ theory after a long line of unexplained and misdiagnosed deaths of pregnant women and his friend. Ignac Semmelweis practiced at Allgemeine Krankenhaus where he found that puerperal fever was transmitted from doctors coming from preforming autopsies to women in labor. He was able to prove that the doctors had trace amounts of the previous dead patients on their hands. Semmelweis said it was dirty doctors and medical staff that were spreading the disease.

The doctors felt he was a difficult man to work with and he was often misunderstood. I felt he accused many doctors of not treating a living patient with care and proper sanitization. He could have approach the situation differentially and the outcome would have been received better. When he did publish his findings it was very confusing, hard to follow and he accused other doctors as murderers. Semmelweis already being somewhat of an outcast just made it worse. In the later years of his life, his wife had him committed to an asylum hospital. Within two weeks after being admitted it is said he was beaten by hospital staff and died from the beating. Although Sherwin Nuland believes Semmelweis had a form of Alzheimer’s disease, but others instead he was insane. We will never know why he died. The Doctor’s plague, by author Sherwin Nuland was a very informative read. At times it was slow, I feel it would be a good read for future medical students. It is a glimpse of how horrible and scary it was to be a patient back in the 1840’s. It is a time in history that paved the road to insert proper disinfection and sterilization procedures for patients. Semmelweis was a pioneer in the medical field, but never knew