A new look at an old research study In 1986, a group of urologists in London published a research paper in The British Medical Journal that compared the effectiveness of two different methods to remove kidney stones. Treatment A was open surgery (invasive), and treatment B was percutaneous nephrolithotomy (less invasive). When they looked at the results from 700 patients, treatment B had a higher success rate. However, when they only looked at the subgroup of patients different kidney stone sizes, treatment A had a better success rate.
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician born in 1818 and active at the Vienna General Hospital during the 1840s. In 1847, the Ignaz Semmelweis made a breakthrough discovery: he discovered handwashing. Contaminated hands were a major cause of childbed fever and were often fatal by enforcing handwashing at his hospital he saved hundreds of lives. Childbed fever was a deadly disease affecting women that just have given birth. In Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, doctors’ wards had three times the mortality of midwives’ wards.