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Anthony Valerio, "Semmelweis: The Women's Doctor" (Zantedeschi Books, 2019)
01:00:44
Though his advice has saved the lives of millions of people, the name Ignaz Semmelweis is not one commonly known today...
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- [00:01]
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Anthony Valerio
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:37]
Mark Clobus
Hello everyone, and welcome back to New Books and Biography, a podcast channel on the New Books Network. I'm Mark Clobus, your host for the channel. Today I'm speaking with Anthony Valerio, author of the book Anthony Valerio's Semmelweis. Anthony, welcome to the New Books Network.
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Anthony Valerio
Thank you, Mark, for having me and it's a pleasure and a privilege to be here.
- [01:55]
Mark Clobus
Well, it's a pleasure to have you on our podcast.
- [01:58]
Anthony Valerio
Thank you.
- [01:59]
Mark Clobus
I was wondering if you could start us off by telling our listeners something about yourself.
- [02:04]
Anthony Valerio
I consider myself a professional writer and a professional book editor. That by that I mean that I've sought to earn a living from writing and, and editing from, well, from the 70s on. And I've been pretty fortunate to be able to do that. I was fortunate, as was Semmelweis, to have great mentors and teachers. And so I was trained as a line editor and then as an acquisition editor. And at the same time I began writing. I began writing and I published. I was published a short story in the Paris Review. George Plimpton was my first editor. And it went on from there. I found myself, and this is when I'm thinking about how I ended with Semmelweis in my recent book, Writing about People. My first book was a series of Family portraits, my mother, my father. And I found that if I concentrated on one character, I often found that within writing about that one character, another character would enter, and then that second character would become the subject of the second essay. So I became a professional editor and writer rather early on and was fortunate to have a history of several books which led up to the Semmelweis project. I found that the integration in my case of editing, a professional editor and a writer, they really meshed to the point where I cannot tell the difference where one begins and the second ends. We like to say when a writer is writing, not to edit at the first draft anyway, you don't edit yourself. And I find, you know, maybe beginning writers can do that. But I learned not to do that. But then in the second, third and fourth draft, it kicks in, and I'll be able to do that now. I found that also I was very fortunate to have a professional editor in a commercial world at Harcourt Brace. His name was Corley Cork Smith. So I've been lucky with editors also who. Who I worked with on several books. So that's fortunate because you might know and notice that today there are very few, quote, unquote, literary editors. I know they're talking about just typos about books and manuscripts that you can say, boy, this book needed an editing, as Semmelweis did. See, Semmelweis did not have an editor either, which drew me to his work in life.
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Mark Clobus
So you were drawn to his work in life, but what was it that led you to decide that you should.
- [04:46]
Anthony Valerio
Write a biography about him? It started this way. I was a French major at Columbia University, and one of the authors I looked at, which became. He was very controversial. Louis Ferdinand Celine, very controversial. And it has been a problem in the literary world about how to deal with him because he wrote very important novels, and at the same time, he wrote anti Semitic pamphlets. So it's problematic. So they say, well, we can just look at his work. It's not anti Semitic. Anyway. Semmelweis, when he was a medical student, wrote his medical thesis on the Leichman work of semmelweis. This is 1935, okay? I was told about that book by one of my mentors, Jacques Sendulescu, who knew about that book, and St. Lee, he was a doctor. His name was Detouche. And he wrote his medical thesis. And it's absolutely inspired. It's almost an hallucinogenic take on a great scientist's life who was persecuted and denied. Okay. So I knew about Semmelweis early On now, the second thing happened in one of my books. I'm looking at the books, the fifth book, one, I think, fifth or sixth, called Tawny Cape, Umbara's One Sicilian Knight, that involved a legation in Sicily of American writers and translators, one of whom was Kurt Vonnegut. And Kurt Vonnegut had won a prize for his novel Galapagos. And we became friends and colleagues in Sicily. And then Kurt asked me for my book that I had on Semmelweis because he wanted to reprint it. We are talking now in the early 1990s. Then what happened was Kurt Vonnegut fell on a stoop and died later in the hospital. And there I was wondering, and it's in the book, in the early part of the book, is why was Vonnegut interested? Essentially a science science fiction writer known for that and a scientist who really dealt day in and day out with how could I put this? Non. You know, basic life issues. Well, so I began to wonder now when you know, at least this writer, when I begin to wonder, that's very good because then I began to look into it more deeply. And then I read everything that's expand on Semmelweis's life. So it was pretty much through a series of very personal friends and education that led me to Semmelweis life. Now, just to say as we talked earlier, I want to, if I may. I wrote this book two years before the present endemic and Semmelweis endemic during his time. What he found, the causes for and the means of prevention was childbed fever. Childbed fever or peripheral fever was killing. Was killing new mothers at a rate higher than the plague, at a rate higher than people are dying now. If a woman went into a lying in hospital in the mid 19th century, her chances of not only delivering successfully but coming out alive were set against her. So those were the, those that was the impetus. It was not Semmelweis's life at first, but it was personal influences of mentors and friends that led me to writing about Semmelweis.
- [08:24]
Mark Clobus
That definitely comes across in the text. You talk about the roles that they've played, played. And it seems that those roles were especially important given all the obstacles he faced in terms of trying to change how practically everyone in medicine practiced their, their trade.
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Anthony Valerio
There's a, there's a. There's a syndrome called the Semmelweis reflex. The reflex was the instant rejection of note of, of science that goes against the prevalent notions and ideas. And certainly Semmelweis. Semmelweis embodied that at that point in history, we are talking the mid 19th century. He was. He was from Budapest and he was from Budapest. And he was a character which interested we could get into. His character was very petulant. He was very gruff. He had a difficulty with language, which his mother was aware of, and wrote to one of his mentors, Joseph Skoda. Semmelweis was also fortunate in having great mentors and teachers which helped him get through two years in Vienna during which he made his discoveries. So the prevalent notions of why women were dying of childbed fever in the lying in clinics at Vienna's hospital, which was the largest in the world, were atmospheric. Atmospheric, you know, windblown, the mother's milk. These outlandish theories which Semmelweis researched when he found himself in the position of obstetrics. Obstetrics was a new field of study in the 1840s in Vienna again, which is largest hospital in the world. It was a new study. And he came through. He came to it going from law, which his father wanted to be a lawyer, to medicine. And he came to it by virtue of attrition. There was no other job for him in the hospital. Vienna Hospital had a law school, a medical school. They had maternity wards. And so. And he had a room in the hospital. Ignat Selma Weiss lived in a room in the hospital during the entire time of his discoveries. And in fact, you might. You might recall I'm writing that. I mean, it's so claustrophobic. So he was surrounded by disease. And I'm looking for a time maybe when he took a walk outside the grounds. And I couldn't find that. So. So he. So. So what happened was when he began to. And we could talk about the process of. His process of discovery, but what he began to find went against what other obstetricians were presenting as the causes. And so their line was, well, since there's no cure, we are powerless and blameless. So there you have another example of women old. All the. All the. All the victims we were talking about were women and the men who. His colleagues were men and they were medical students who were male and they were his colleagues who were male. Even midwives at that time began as men and then they transitioned to women, that is midwifery. So that was essentially the Semmelweis that emerged as persecuted, which Kurt Lonergan and Celine presented. In other words, what they really, I think, drawn to this character who really made great discoveries, which, look, wash your hands was his prescription. And we can talk about how he came to that. But wash your Hands was his prescription and it was not followed. And women continued to die.
- [12:34]
Mark Clobus
Well, I definitely want to get into all of that, but why don't we start with the beginning? I mean, we're. Let's talk a bit about his circumstances. From where did Semmelweis come? Was he. What was his family's background and how did he go, as you've already alluded from this education that was geared towards the law, into medicine?
- [12:58]
Anthony Valerio
He was born in Buddha of Budapest, a small mountain town. His father was a spice merchant, rather successful, a Jewish spice merchant. His mother. His mother came from a well to do family. Her father was manufacturing coaches. So when I was reading about his childhood, the first part is called home. The question is, well, was there anything in his childhood that can indicate that he would emerge as a scientific genius? And there was none. He came from a rather well to do family. He loved. He didn't like school very much. He loved the street life. He loved the idea of chance meeting street musicians in Budapest, street musicians, music, clapping of spoons and dancing. He loved that. He loved life on the street rather than in school. But he managed to graduate. So. And he had siblings now. His mother had nine children. Now Semmelweis was the fourth of nine. So it struck me that he was a kind of fulcrum, not only in his own house, but also historically, where he came at the fulcrum of medicine, modern and, if I may, rather ancient medicine. He also came at a fulcrum when politically governments were going from monarchies to representative governments. And in fact there was a revolution in 1848 of which he took part. So his moment in history. His moment in history. It was an attractive idea which I pursued. But as far as Holme was concerned, his father wanted him to pursue connections with the Prussian army and his son could be a lawyer, some sort of almost a diplomat, if you wish, with a horse, going to settle accounts. And where he could do that was in Vienna, the Vienna Law School. So he went there, he goes to Vienna and he misses home. As soon as he opens his mouth, he's taken for a hit from the country. His nature was. He would not abide people making fun of him. And what happened was there he started studying law and we knew right away it was not for him. Law was prescribed by the. By the dictator and the Congress of Vienna. And one day a friend takes him to a medical class and he walks into a class, just one day to audit it. And there is a famous doctor, Joseph Skoda, S K O D A and Skoda becomes his mentor and teacher. At that particular demonstration, a woman who. She was alive and started, was examining the causes of her fever. And some of the scene is, he's just in the back. He's looking up. He's attracted to. Now, the language was German, and his German was terrible. But he listened. And then he found a study where he really didn't have to talk much, not only in obstetrics, but the women on the ward. I mean, what were they going to say? He knew all there was to say. So he actually. I almost felt he could have been mute. Anyway, he's in that class, and what he does is the next day he goes down alone and to see what happened to that fever victim. And so he goes upstairs. She had died overnight. And so he starts to meet the surgeon who becomes a second teacher. And he begins. He changes his profession, he changes his route, his study from law to medicine without telling his father. At that point, as far as his father's influence was gone. I mean, once he started his medical career, he only spent two years in Vienna. And he did all of his work essentially in Vienna. And then we can talk about what happened when he was denied tenure and went back to Budapest and started life. So that's pretty much his home life. His parents. Both parents died during those two years. And he goes back, and then he changes some law. Because medicine, see, medicine had its own language for him. Medicine there was the language of the body, which was a language that was not dictated as far as he was concerned. And that's what he was comfortable with.
- [17:36]
Mark Clobus
I feel it. It might benefit us if you could perhaps elaborate a bit upon Joseph Spoda and also the culture of the medical community in Vienna at that time, because as you explain in the book, that really looms large in terms of Semmelweis's life and his fate. I can't help but think that all the stress that he was exposed to then played a role in his subsequent insanity. Who was Spoda? What was his place in the society? And why did that place matter so much in terms of Semmelweis's life and career?
- [18:18]
Anthony Valerio
Great question. So you have. This was fortunate on Semmelweis part. You had a culture dictated from the Queen of Anti Semitism, and you had a conservative education minister appointed by the Congress of Vienna in line with certain conservative ideas. At the same time, the Crown needed good doctors so that their children could survive childbirth, so that they could go on to become duchesses and dukes and acquire more land. So they did. It happened that although the education Minister was conservative. The doctors, the physicians they hired were great. And that's the case of Joseph Skoda, who. Now these men and the physicians I talked to, his research, especially one who's mentioned in the book. Dr. Elizabeth Jones, had studied Skoda in medical school, in other words. So Semmelweis meets these teachers not knowing that they had already written the books on percussion, heart disease. The stethoscope was invented. Bunsen burner wasn't even invented yet. So you have Joseph Skoda's internist, you have. Baron von Rokitansky was the surgeon, a pathological. Pathological surgeon who was drawn to Semmelweis. And while Semmelweis was waiting for a job, Rokandansky brought him in to surgery. And Semmelweis experienced surgery for two years and became a master surgeon. Now, Rokandansky said that everyone who died in that hospital, you required an autopsy. So then, so there is his mentor and teacher and there's Semmelweis performing autopsies. Now. When they performed autopsy, there was no gloves. There was no surgical, you know, brush. There was no gloves at all. So they were. And I looked at, I tried. I described their garb. They, you know, they were all filled with blood. Okay, now. And so, and so, so he had mentors who, who wrote the books about their field which are studied today. He knew about the books. He read the books. But here's the thing that drew me, I think the. Finally to his life and work was he hated to write. He said that. He said that anything has to do with writing is. Is out. So out of my question. And in fact, it hurt him because just like today, you know, publish or perish, when he made his discoveries, he didn't write about it. And he wrote about it 10 years too late. And we could get to that. Towards the end, what happened when he did do it? So these professors he had. And also there were professors from all around Europe who went to Vienna Hospital attracted to what his mentors and teachers were doing. They were interested in it. And Semmelweis met them. And later on, we'll see, he became colleagues. And some of the colleagues he met there followed his prescription and saved women's lives. So that was pretty much his grooming. His grooming was great teachers, great studies, but not in obstetrics. It happened that his Superior in obstetrics, Dr. Klein, was his main adversary, not only in Vienna, but for the rest of his life. He denied him his discoveries. Why? Because he. There were maybe. And we could again, just to say, I did not draw any, any, any comparisons when I was writing that book with, with today. Because it was before what happened today. Because Klein wanted the credit for what Semmelweis was doing. He was only an assistant. Semmelweis was. He wasn't a full professor and his superiors were full professors and the, and the physi. And, and. And his fellow obstetricians around Europe were full professors. Some followed him and some didn't. Most did not. So that was his education. He was an accomplished internist and an accomplished surgeon and then he entered obstetrics with a clear slate. And so that was his training, great training. And we can talk now, if you wish, about his job as. His first job as Klein's assistant was the clerk of records. The clerk of. Is that, is that. If I. Can I talk a little about the clerk of records?
- [23:32]
Mark Clobus
Please do. Because I'm curious to see also what insights that gives into his relationship with Klein because Klein really does loom as this huge antagonist. And that's, that's one of the parts of your book I thought was really interesting was this isn't just simply about medicine. This isn't simply about science. You also have this social dimension and how it doesn't matter what Semmelweis can prove or what Semmelweis can demonstrate. Klein can simply sit there because he has the ear of influential people in court, in the medical community and he continually uses that to shut Semmelweis's opportunities down.
- [24:09]
Anthony Valerio
That's exactly right. To counterbalance that it might add. That's exactly right. We could go into what happened with client Joseph Skoda, Dr. Skoda and Rokandatsky. See, as the 40s progressed, as Semmelweis career progressed, their power increased. In fact, Skoda became the court's physician. So what happened was whatever difficulty Semmelweis came into as a result of his character, in fact, he confronted Klein about washing his hands. And Klein asked him, well, what proof do you have? And see, Semmelweis hadn't written it up. Colleagues wrote it up. And also he did experiments on rabbits that didn't prove anything much. And Semmelweis exploded on him and was thrown out of school. And it was Skoda who really diplomatically counterbalanced declines power in, quote, court that if that had not happened, and Rokandansky, to his nature, I mean, which struck me as a man who performed perhaps more autopsies than any physician in history, had a very congenial, pleasant nature. And both of those always came to Semmelweis rescue to come Back to work. And so he was able to continue to work. He was scota, actually, at one point says, look, you have to get out of town. And Semmelweis went to Venice with his very good friend from childhood. He had one friend and also a doctor, and he went to Venice. He went to Venice and he took a vacation. And this was during the two years of his assistantship. So there was a mediation somewhat of Klein's. He does emerge, you know, as some villainous, terrible person, which it looks like he really was. He really denied. He denied Semmelweis his discoveries because he never really proved. It was never 100% of no women dying from gyro. It was always 1.3%, 0.3%. It did come down from 15%, 30% after Selma Weiss's prescriptions of hand washings. And then what happened was Klein died. That was later on.
- [26:38]
Mark Clobus
So let's talk.
- [26:43]
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- [27:10]
Mark Clobus
I mean, what. How exactly does Semmelweis come upon this realization that it's. That by washing hands, by cleaning underneath the nails, that they can reduce this incidence of childhood fever?
- [27:28]
Anthony Valerio
Here's how it goes. There were two lying in clinics in his hospital. Clinic number one and clinic number two, he over Semmelweis, that is, and client oversaw clinic number one. In clinic number one worked medical students and colleagues of Semmelweis, and clinic number two were midwives. Clinic number one, the death rate was higher than in clinic number two. Now, just to back up a minute, when Selma Weiss was clerk of records, he was the one person who interviewed all of the pregnant women who came to the hospital to give birth. It was. He was looking at them only he. He was listening to them. He heard their stories, whether they had fathers, you know, if they had husbands or not. And they were mainly late teenage women, which he called of the, quote, comfortless classes. So they knew these women knew that the death rate was for childbed fever was higher in clinic number one than in clinic number two. Okay, so now Semmelweis may not have liked to write or frankly speak much. And when he did, it was, it was. It was A. It was a kind of. A swingy kind of German, was he. He loved to research, so he researched statistics. And every move he made, he had to wait and see what happened with, with the numbers. So he said, okay, now the death rate in my clinic is higher than clinic number two. So what I'm going to do is. What I'm going to try to do is what I did is what he did was he exchanged. He got scoded to be who allowed him to exchange the midwives in clinic number two with the students, medical students and colleagues. And number two, in other words, his first level of inquiry was to level the death rate in both clinics. And then if that were the case, he can take variables and then examine each variable and come. Now, now when I'm, when one is looking at this and one is working, this is his process. It's like a medical mystery. He was like this detective. Now, this is no compound microscope 50 years before Louis Pasteur. And so all Semmelweis has is the power of observation and his genius, if you will. His power. Observation and watching and listening. Okay, so, okay, he exchanges it and then the death rate is, it becomes level in both, in both clinics. What struck me as I'm working on this and we could talk about what happened to the. What happened to me as I'm proceeding towards, you know, his madness and death was that I began to. I began to, I began to understand that while all this was going on, women were still dying. Women were still dying in his clinic and all the clinics in the world of childbed fever. While he's, while he's doing. Okay, so then, so then here's what he does. He, he, he knows that he's, he's leveled, so that he was leveled that rate in both clinics. Now what he does is he starts. He starts examining the variable. The variable in clinic number one was medical students and colleagues. Then what he does was he waits and follows the movements of the medical students from autopsy down. He actually watches this down to the lying in clinics, watches him do an autopsy, which he was practiced in. Sometimes washing their hands with soap and water and sometimes not going down to the lining in clinics and doing in body examinations of women close to termination. Women. Okay, so now, so now, now here's what he does. Okay, so he tells his colleague, the answer is right here in my clinic. Now, that struck me as extraordinary because women were dying all over the world. And then this scientist, only an assistant, says the answer is here in this particular clinic, in this particular hospital, which, okay, so what he does is he goes up to autopsy and he, after an autopsy, he smells his hands. Now he couldn't see germs, but he can smell. And at that time he knew that chlorine eliminate was known to eliminate smell. So he goes into the lab and he concocts a solution of chloride, chlorine, chloride of lime and chlorine. And he, he tries again. He smells and soon, and soon there's no smell. So what he does is. So what he does is he makes the connection between the cadaveric poisonings on the hands and the smell. And if he could eliminate the smell, maybe he would eliminate the cause or you know, the germ, so to speak. So he goes out himself and he find, he by, he buys solution which is expensive. So then he found a solution of chlorine which is, which he was able to afford pitchers and bowls and he sets them up outside the lying in clinic. The majority of his colleagues, including Klein, would not use it. Sun did and some colleagues around Europe did and the death rate plummeted to virtually 1%. What happened then was he couldn't write up his results just to say some of his students did and they went around Europe. And this I followed too very carefully about some of his students who went to London, Paris and gave papers on what Semmelweis process was with his hand washing to chlorine and the death rate plummeting and similar old semi would say, well, my results speak for themselves. I mean, that's the kind of individual he was. And of course that wasn't enough. So that's essentially the process with the details of the two clinics exchanging the personnel and then going from, and going for, and then going into the movements of the nature of the work they did in relation to the women, what was entering the new mother's body. And I have to say also which is very affecting, you know. You know, just imagine, I mean we as male men can imagine going through nine months of pregnancy and gestation and going through childbirth and then getting sick and dying three days later with a, with symptoms and a disease that one doctor told me any literary description that you read doesn't approach how a woman suffers from that disease. That's pretty much, that was pretty much the breakthrough of what happened to him. And then what happened to him was war broke out in 1848 and the hospital was closed. And then Semmelweis said, see, the death rate came down because nobody, you know, nobody's going from autopsy down to the lying in clinics. And then he, he goes to Budapest. If he participates in the revolution, which was not bloody like it was in Rome, and then he goes back to work and what, and then we can talk about what happens when he goes back to work a brief time and then his tenure is not, is not picked up and then he leaves Budapest and we can get into that point. So, so that's pretty much the, that's pretty much the breakthrough. His process was fascinating to me.
- [35:54]
Mark Clobus
The, the process is fascinating. It's also fascinating the way that you. Situated within this transition point, because so much of what's going on as I'm reading it, you, what you're getting at, what he seems to be doing is he's getting at germ theory of disease, but he doesn't have the language for it. He doesn't have the, the, the, the concepts aren't there yet. So what you're seeing is, it's almost like he's trying to explain germ theory using humoral medicine, and he's talking about odors. He's on the right track, but he, he doesn't know about germs. So it's the odors. And that's where people are like, well, how can you know that? They can't quite process how. What he's identifying is something real. And I was especially struck by how he has to have these people who are taken by his idea, who are inspired by his idea, try to explain it for them and the obstacles they face. How widely was his idea disseminated in the 1840s and 1850s, and what were some of the factors that were restricting its acceptance by the medical profession.
- [36:58]
Anthony Valerio
After it was clear that he himself wouldn't write? He had, in fact, even Joseph Skoda gave a lecture or two about his findings. And what Skoda did, he made it, in a sense, worse because Skoda actually mentioned the clinics that were not using his students prescriptions and more women were dying. But he mentioned who the scientists were, and they became enemies of Semmelweis and hounded him to the rest of his life. So in other words, he had his colleagues giving talks about his findings. He had students going. He had students going to conferences in different countries. And they also, and they also sent out. And someonewise participated in this. They sent out letters, letters through the post. And the letters were. The letters embodied what his findings were, the death rates, how he proceeded, what, you know, exchanging. And the sand washings and the chlorine and, and what have. And it just, and it. So then they, they, they, they wrote these letters and sent them out and Then they waited. So in other words, what you know, in writing about this, was always aware of was that Semmelweis had to wait. It was waiting. He was waiting for results. He was waiting for feedback. The feedback largely was mixed. It was largely. And a lot of it was hostile. How dare this Jewish assistant from Budapest tell us, who was tenured before he was born, to do this, this and this? We tried it, and it didn't work. And turns out at the end, when Semmelweis accuses them, when he was so. So. So to speak, going crazy and mad, he accuses them of murder. He actually calls them murderers. And so the feedback, though, was mixed. He had some colleagues who followed his prescriptions and were successful, and he had the majority, and there were. The famous names were hesitant to adopt his prescriptions. Why? Whether they wanted credit for themselves, whether it was not proven scientifically. And I want also just to say about that, that after he returned from Venice, by the way, a colleague of his, Jacob Collecha, accidentally died in a class by puncturing himself and infecting himself. And Semmelweis came back, and it was a great loss to him because Collecha was a close colleague and he read the autopsy report, and the autopsy report and collection was similar to the symptoms of a woman contracting childbirth fever. So then he begins to study that, and he realizes that it's not only childbirth. Anyone can pick up this infection if it's infected. And they called it septicemia, which is blood poisoning. Then he resolved that this infection is passed into the blood. That. So. But. But when Skoda and some of his students are talking about it, they don't. They leave that part out. And so it was not complete what they were presenting to the medical establishment as far as what Semmelweis discovered. That's what happened. It was incomplete and. And a lot of it. And I heard a lot about. Well, you know, it was Semmelweis's own fault. He shouldn't. I said, well, this is. His character was such that. That was as much as you can do. And then he wrote his book 10 years later, and we could talk about what happened then.
- [41:08]
Mark Clobus
So, yeah, I'd like to talk about the book, but I like to get us there first because you've already mentioned that he's in. He's not just involved in medicine, he's involved in politics and how this is going to create a lot of complications for him. So how does his involvement in the revolutions in 1848 and 1849 affect his standing in Vienna and What is the situation like when he goes back to Budapest?
- [41:38]
Anthony Valerio
He. The great revolutionaries of the 19th century were nurtured from the time of the conquest of Vienna. They grew up under repression and became revolutionaries. So what was happening while the repressive government was going on? Here's who were being born. Garibaldi, Matsini, Skoda, Kosooth. Revolutionary revolution. Hungarian revolutionary. Semmelweis brothers. So they came of age exactly in 1848. So what happened was revolution breaks out. And unfortunately, I had done a lot of research on the Italian risorgimento in a previous book. So I knew all about what was happening in Rome in 1848, 1849, and that Vienna needed a puppet poet. In other words, if there was not a puppet poet in Rome, the Vienna royalty could really not survive. They needed the support of the Catholic Church. And so what happened during 1848 in Rome? The government under Mazzini and Garibaldi, the Pope left. He left to the Neapolitan kingdom disguised as a page. So what happened was Vienna sent their armies to Rome and that the revolutions in Vienna itself and in Budapest were really not bloody. So but semi took part. There were like slogans and dance singing and, you know, efforts to change what was happening worldwide was from a modern monarchy to a more representative government, lower taxes, representation. And there was student upheavals in. In Vienna. So what happened was. So it was not bloody. But what happened was Semmelweis's reputation as a revolutionary, of course followed him to Vienna. And of course Klein knew about that. And the people who were presenting obstacles had a new reason to present. At the same time, however, Skoda and Rokandansky, they're gaining favor in the court. So again, they neutralize any. They kept him working until the point when his tenure of two years was over and he was not continued. He was not granted a continuance of his work. He was not. He tried to be. He tried different ways to remain at the hospital and continue his work. And it's detailed, you know, in the book, about how he tried to be a private teacher and work at the hospital. And then it came down to this. The midwives in clinic number two used for training and teaching, they used what was called a phantom, not a live cadaver. And Semmelweis felt that he couldn't teach if he used the phantom. And so he applied for this position of private docent using live cadavers. It was granted. And then when they listed the course, someone intervened and said that he can only practice using this phantom, which was a dummy. And then he said that was the last straw. He left. And he never. He left really. He really just packed and left his room and returned to Budapest and did not return to Vienna until he was admitted to the insane asylum there.
- [45:33]
Mark Clobus
So what was his life in Budapest like? I mean, was he, did he have stature as a doctor, trained in Vienna, or was it a more difficult life? What opportunities, what positions were available to him?
- [45:46]
Anthony Valerio
When he retired to Budapest, there was famine. The war had taken a terrible toll on Budapest and there were very few medical meetings. But he went to one meeting and he was known. His reputation had followed him to Budapest. Oh, you're the doctor who said, wash your hands. It's as if what he had prescribed in Vienna had not reached. And so that's what he found. He found a world of obstetrics which was uninfluenced by his work in Vienna. It was like two different worlds. But what happened was they knew about his reputation and they said, well, at our hospital we don't have hand washings and, but, but, but, but our birth rate, our death rate is very low. So he went there, he went to Saint Rock, Saint Rocco's Hospital. So we're seeing a Semmelweis qualities to follow following him from his, his work of two years, his groundbreaking work into this part of his life in his home country. And, and, and then, and then he sees, and then he sees the, the death rate is lower in St Rocco's or at least it's not being reported correctly, or the surgeon is doing this and this. And so when he starts to point out, alienates even those colleagues around him because of his nature. And then what happens is this. He was living a life. He's absolutely penurious. He's living in a room. He falls and breaks his arm, he falls and breaks his leg and he's committed to bed. It looked like the end to him. What happens was Skoda, his teachers and mentors in Vienna are alerted to this, to the friend he had in his childhood, Marcus Zapsky, his name was, goes and finds him in Vienna and reports back his condition. So Semmelweis may have thought he was always entirely alone, but he was not. And so what happens? Also, someone else visits him who happened to be a student of a colleague who followed his prescriptions, not in Vienna, who accidentally infected his niece. And then when he found out he accidentally infected his knees, he steps in front of a train and kills himself. So now the student of this professor, I don't have the name in front of Me right now is telling Semmelweis this story. And it seems to instill in him some life that there was this colleague who followed his prescriptions, but then accidentally infected his niece. Which by the way, Semmelweis also wrote that he himself infected women. So in other words, he gave himself as an example and this will figure later on in his life. He did not say, I am innocent, I am not. He said, I too cause the spread of this epidemic. Okay, he gets up and he goes to St. Rocco's Hospital and, and Skoda gives him a letter of reference. Skoda is known and he's offered a job, a summer substitute. And he takes it. This begins a new phase of his life. He's already had his. He's already made his invention, his discoveries, and he's beginning a new life in his hometown. He does. He falls in love and he marries. And so here we have an innovative scientist who's painted as a solitary, you know, rebel. But he, he attempts to, to lead a conventional life. He marries, he has children, he begins to earn a living. He's appointed a professor and he marries Maria Wiedenhofer, who is also a Budapest, who was of the age of the women who came to. He interviewed when he was a clerk of records in the late teens. At this point he's in his 50s and they begin to have children. Some survive. All, all delivered successfully. By the way, when he. After the, after the, the revolution in, in Vienna, he kept wearing his out, you know, his revolutionary costume and he began to deliver the children of very, very important doctors. So, so in other words, if he, if you want to make sure your wife was. Gave birth successfully, you would hire Semmelweis because he knew how to do it and they did so. And so he's married and he has a job. What he does is. What happens is he decides to write his book ten years after his, his assistantship. So I'll pause there if you have. If you want to insert some question here about.
- [51:20]
Mark Clobus
I was going to ask a bit about his book, but it's also. You've described. You're describing a person who is. It seems like he's settling down. He's. He's. He's establishing stature, he is establishing a very well rounded life. And then he has this tragic turn and he has this incredibly heart rendering end where he dies still relatively young, not as a result of any sort of exposure to fever or the other things that come naturally with his, with his environment, but he, he dies in an insane asylum.
- [52:00]
Anthony Valerio
Yes. What happens Is as I'm working on this now, always kept in mind that some wife hated to write. And there I was writing his life story. So his hatred of writing was very much in the foreground of my mind. What happened was Semmelweis, from early on liked to frequent houses of prostitution. Prostitution in Vienna and in Venice. And all I tracked wherever he was, whether prostitution was legal or not. And it changed. Some places was legal, some places was not. So he frequented houses. Prostitution when at a rather young age. And what happened was as while first of all, the book was a disaster. His book, which I. Which I. Which I read again, hadn't we had been talking earlier about editing, had no editor. It was a mishmash. It hadn't. It did not follow chronologically. It was panned. The reviews were panned and that. And so he gave his detractors the opportunity to say, well, see, he's completely confused and crazy. And in the book he. He. He singled out doctors and people and started calling the murders. And what he did was realizing. And so there were some theories about how he contracted syphilis. His brain began to go. There was. I give all the theories of. Of. Of his decline. Alzheimer's, deterioration of the brain through syphilis. Celine just said he was just persecuted and died from persecution. No one would believe him because all the while women are still dying. And then what he does is he's confined. He's confined. And one night he makes up a placard and he starts posting these placards up on the street. Men brothers, if you allow. He starts to make up these signs and he puts them up on the street and he goes out without a hat. And every. Men were supposed to wear. Wear hats. And he didn't wear a hat. He was supposed to be crazy. And he starts behaving in a very erratic manner. And it's said. And his wife calls in. Now his wife calls in physicians to examine him, none of. None of whom are psychiatrists. One was a pediatrician, one was a friend. And they decide, well, you know, he has a lover who's a prostitute. He's doing this and he's doing that. And he's health and he was faithful to you, but now he's not. And in the end, she convinces him to go back to Vienna to see a colleague who had opened the sanitarium. And he was committed to the general population of Yosemite. In Vienna he went with his wife and an uncle and a daughter of theirs. And as this began to continue, towards the end, I gave it over to the scientists who had different versions of really what happened to him in the asylum. Because how could I say? It's not that I couldn't write it, it was so awful. And it's all written down about how he was beaten, on how he fought, and the autopsy performed on him. And that's essentially the movements of his life. At the same time, I'm saying to myself, you know, what would be an uplifting moment for this project would be, wouldn't it be all the women and the women's lives she saved? Wouldn't it be also. Because childhood fever would also pass down to babies they had, you know, the women signed the contract in Vienna that if their women died, the children would be placed in a foundling home. And many, many babies died. And, you know, running back to hiv, how sometimes HIV was passed down from, you know, the mother to the infant. Same thing happened in childbed fever. And, and then, and then Dr. Nuland, who wrote a Sherwin Newland, wrote a book on Semmelweis and saline, had their versions of how exactly he was killed and the details of it, the symptoms that he exhibited. It's also said that during his period of so called insanity, he rushed into a surgical theater and cut himself and reached into the corpse and infected himself. And some of the symptoms, some of the symptoms that he exhibited that are registered by physicians and, and are symptoms of women suffering from childbirth, fever. So in the end, really, he made an example of himself.
- [57:31]
Mark Clobus
Well, we've taken a lot of your time, but before we go, could you tell us what you're working on now?
- [57:39]
Anthony Valerio
Thank you. So I've experimented with biography for quite a while now. And one of the, one of the authors I edited and was a friend of mine was the children's book writer Shel Silverstein. And I started, I was asked to do a little piece about the walks we used to take in Greenwich Village and the work, you know, we did, collaborated together on. And I edited a book of his. And it started as just this little walk and it blossomed into now, you know, you know, a couple of hundred pages. So that's what I'm working on. Thank you for asking. I'm almost done with that. And what I appreciate today is working on writers moving on. But then to go back to Semmelweis and feel the importance of his work in his life and how it might resonate today. Any individuals working today on the present epidemic, which instead of individuals really, we really hear more about pharmaceutical companies than. Of course, there's Dr. Fauci and other individuals working on it. But in Semmelweis's time, it was just him. He was the cannon. He was the authority. Anyway, so that's what I'm working on now. And it's a lighter project and that's what I'm working on. It's in process, but it needs another week or two and I'll be finished with that. So it's a walk with Shel Silverstein. It's very amusing. It presents another side of this great children's book writer, songwriter and a friend of mine. And it just presents a different side. How could I say? Very human. Aside from him, that's really not well known.
- [59:28]
Mark Clobus
It sounds like a fantastic book. I look forward to reading it when it comes out.
- [59:31]
Anthony Valerio
You will. I will send you a copy and let you know.
- [59:34]
Mark Clobus
Well, thank you. Anthony Valerio, thank you very much for taking some time out of your schedule to speak with us. Hope you have a wonderful day.
- [59:41]
Anthony Valerio
I want to thank you very much, Mark, and it was a real pleasure and an experience. Going back over this. I appreciate, appreciate the opportunity.
- [60:02]
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