Family and Early Life
Ignaz Semmelweis was born on July 1, 1818 in the Tabán, an area of Buda, part of present Budapest, Hungary (then part of the Austrian Empire). He was the fifth child out of ten of a prosperous grocer family of Josef and Teresia Müller Semmelweis.
His father, Josef Semmelweis (1778–1846), was born in Kismarton, at that time in Hungary. Josef achieved permission to set up shop in Buda in 1806 and, in the same year, opened a wholesale business with spices and general consumer goods named zum Weißen Elefanten (at the White Elephant) in Meindl-Haus in Tabán (today's 1-3, Apród Street, Semmelweis Museum of Medical History). By 1810, he was a wealthy man when he married Teresia Müller, daughter of the famous coach (vehicle) builder Fülöp Müller.
Ignaz Semmelweis began studying law at the University of Vienna in the autumn of 1837, but by the following year, for reasons that are no longer known, he had switched to medicine. He was awarded his doctorate degree in medicine in 1844. After failing to obtain an appointment in a clinic for internal medicine, Semmelweis decided to specialize in obstetrics. Some of his teachers included Carl von Rokitansky, Josef Skoda and Ferdinand von Hebra.
Read more about this topic: Ignaz Semmelweis
Famous quotes containing the words family, early and/or life:
“I swear ... to hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)
“We do not preach great things but we live them.”
—Marcus Minucius Felix (late 2nd or early 3rd ce, Roman Christian apologist. Octavius, 38. 6, trans. by G.H. Rendell.
“Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)