childbed fever

noun

Pathology.

1. puerperal fever.

Word History and Origins

Origin of childbed fever¹

First recorded in 1925–30

Example Sentences

Once handwashing protocols were implemented in the Austrian hospital, the rates of women dying from childbed fever plummeted.

Read more on Scientific American

Faced with a doctor-led maternity ward in which maternal deaths from the dreaded childbed fever were significantly higher than in the midwife-run clinic there, he racked his brain for clues as to why.

Read more on The Guardian

It lowered the cases of childbed fever to one tenth the original amount.

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In a large class of cases, however, the connection between childbed fever and sepsis has been deduced rather from analogy than direct proof.

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Then she remembered the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor who discovered that deaths from childbed fever could be more or less eliminated by physicians simply washing their hands with chlorinated lime between patients.

Read more on The Guardian