Semmelweis
If you know the name, you’ll know the film. Semmelweis tells the story of the 19th-century doctor who introduced hand-washing to labour wards in Vienna and at a stroke reduced the incidence of puerperal (aka childbed) fever, a killer of new mothers. Opening shot: a pregnant woman going into labour on the Austrian capital’s streets screaming blue murder when the police try to hustle her into the “death factory”, as she calls the maternity hospital. We’ve been plunged straight into the meat of the movie. Why is she so reluctant to go? What is regularly killing new mothers in this venerable institution, and why, we soon learn, does the midwife clinic across the … Read more