A Controversy Revisited

This article revisits the question of what Semmelweis’s discovery owed to Skoda and the Vienna Medical School with two goals in mind. First, it is to present in detail Semmelweis’s own account of his discovery in order to highlight two aspects that have never been understood: (1) that Semmelweis was able to deduce why the maternal mortality rate from childbed fever was so much higher in the first maternity division of the Vienna General Hospital that in the second maternity division only after he had first deduced the cause of CBF in general and not before; and (2) Semmelweis’s conclusion about the cause of CBF in general was the conclusion of deductive (<italic>modus ponendo ponens</italic>) inferences, the logical form of which is: ‘If P, then Q; P; therefore, Q.’ It is thereby shown, <italic>pari passu</italic>, that Semmelweis’s discovery did not depend on Skoda’s method of exclusion, contrary to the claims of the medical historian, Erna Lesky. Second, it is to present evidence that corroborates Semmelweis’s account of his discovery according to which the dispositive event that enabled Semmelweis to deduce the cause of CBF in general was the Kolletschka’s death and autopsy finding, which was challenged by philosopher and medical historian, Eric Podach.