Carl Edvard Marius Levy (10 September 1808 – 30 December 1865) was professor and head of the

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

Maternity institution in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

( Fødsels- og Plejestiftelsen). His name is sometimes spelled "Carl Eduard Marius Levy" or, in foreign literature, "Karl Edouard Marius Levy". Levy graduated 1831 from

Copenhagen University The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public research university in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia after Uppsala Unive ...

in Medicine and surgery. Received the university gold medal in 1830. Licentiat (PhD) degree in 1832. Doctorate degree in 1833. He then embarked on a three-year scientific journey which took him to France, Italy and England. Professor extraordinarius in

obstetrics Obstetrics is the field of study concentrated on pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. As a medical specialty, obstetrics is combined with gynecology under the discipline known as obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), which is a surgi ...

in 1841, professor ordinarius in 1850. He founded the monthly medical journal: Hospitals-Meddelelser. He also founded the Doctor's Association Den Almindelige Danske Lægeforening in 1857, which he headed until 1859. He suffered and would die from a heart defect. He was born Jewish but converted to Christianity in 1840-1841 in order to pursue an academic career. According to his biography, rampant epidemics of

childbed fever Postpartum infections, also known as childbed fever and puerperal fever, are any bacterial infections of the female reproductive tract following childbirth or miscarriage. Signs and symptoms usually include a fever greater than , chills, lower a ...

at the Copenhagen maternity institution tested his ingenuity and determination. Repeated closures of the institution and the creation of interim locales proved fruitless. After a study tour to England and Ireland in 1846 he completely rebuilt and reformed the maternity institution, however with unsatisfactory results. Professor Carl Braun in Vienna said about the Copenhagen hospital, that "because this is the most appropriate and noteworthy newly constructed maternity hospital, in which every step has been taken to halt puerperal fever epidemics, we allow ourselves to estimate that in this new building under Levy's direction no puerperal fever epidemics will occur." Professor Levy was an outspoken critic of

Ignaz Semmelweis Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (; hu, Semmelweis Ignác Fülöp ; 1 July 1818 – 13 August 1865) was a Hungarian physician and scientist, who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. Described as the "saviour of mothers", he discovered that t ...

' ideas, that childbed fever was an

iatrogenic Iatrogenesis is the causation of a disease, a harmful complication, or other ill effect by any medical activity, including diagnosis, intervention, error, or negligence. "Iatrogenic", ''Merriam-Webster.com'', Merriam-Webster, Inc., accessed 2 ...

disease. Semmelweis theorized that decaying matter on the hands of doctors, who had recently conducted autopsies, was brought into contact with the genitals of women giving birth during the medical examinations at the maternity clinic. Semmelweis proposed a radical hand washing theory using chlorinated lime, now a known disinfectant, and demonstrated dramatic reductions in mortality rates. In a rather infamous concluding remark, Professor Levy writes:

These are my impressions of Dr. Semmelweis's experiences; for these reasons I must judge provisionally that his opinions are not clear enough and his findings not exact enough to qualify as scientifically founded.

The above translation is rather benign compared to the punch in the original Danish quote.the original quote is (in Danish):".. at, så vidt de endnu foreligge, hans Anskuelser synes for uklare, hans Iagttagelser for flygtige, hans Erfaringer for usikre, til deraf at udlede videnskabelige Resultater.", which would translate into: ''".. that insofar as they are laid out his emmelweis'views appears too unclear, his observations too volatile, his experiences too uncertain, to deduce scientific results therefrom."'' The sentence before *) could perhaps be translated to the meaning "I must judge provisionally (that) .." The original text is available (in Danish) as a scanned document as well as in

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects (floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a limit ...

. For more of his criticism, see Semmelweis' ideas rejected as unscientific.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Levy, Carl 1808 births 1865 deaths Danish Christians Jewish Danish scientists Converts to Protestantism from Judaism University of Copenhagen alumni Danish obstetricians Academic staff of the University of Copenhagen Physicians from Copenhagen

See also

References