Provide a hypothesis for the observations made by Ignaz

26 Jun Provide a hypothesis for the observations made by Ignaz

Question
Case Study Demonstrating the Scientific Method

Name:

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CASE STUDY OVERVIEW:

• Ignaz Semmelweis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis ) was the head of obstetrics in 1846 at Vienna General Hospital

• That year, 459 women died from childbed fever in one of the Divisions at the hospital (Table 1).

• His goal (and yours!) is to determine the cause of this disease.

A FEW EXTRA PIECES OF INFORMATION:

• The hospital had two divisions: 1 and 2

• Division 1: Doctors and medical students delivered babies (after doing autopsies in the morning)

• Division 2: Midwives delivered babies

• In Division 2, mortality rates were much lower

• Around the same time, one of his colleague’s died of a massive infection, he was able to determine the cause through an autopsy of childbed fever

• This colleague was stuck in the finger by a scalpel during an autopsy on a woman who died of childbed fever

TABLE 1: Mortality rates for the First and Second Clinic at the Vienna General Hospital 1841–1846.

First clinic

Second clinic

Year

Births

Deaths

Rate (%)

Births

Deaths

Rate (%)

1841

3,036

237

7.8

2,442

86

3.5

1842

3,287

518

15.8

2,659

202

7.6

1843

3,060

274

9.0

2,739

164

6.0

1844

3,157

260

8.2

2,956

68

2.3

1845

3,492

241

6.9

3,241

66

2.0

1846

4,010

459

11.4

3,754

105

2.8

QUESTIONS:

1. Provide a hypothesis for the observations made by Ignaz.

2. Given your hypothesis, what would your prediction be?

3. How would you test your hypothesis? (Provide a brief description of an experiment that you would design)

4. What would you expect to discover in your experiment?

5. Now you have a “result” from your experiment, what would you do?