Fields Forensic Medicine Name Jakob Kolletschka | Influenced Ignaz Semmelweis | |
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Known for death by childbed fever Died March 13, 1847, Vienna, Austria | ||
Jakob Kolletschka (4 July 1803, Biela (now Luže), Bohemia – 13 March 1847, Vienna) was Professor of Forensic Medicine at Vienna General Hospital in Austria.
Jakob Kolletschka is mostly known for his death which eventually led Ignaz Semmelweis to his discovery of the etiology of childbed fever. Below is a quote from the original reference describing the details of his death.
In a lecture in 1846 he is reputed to have said, "It is here no uncommon thing for midwives, especially in the commencement of their practice, to pull off legs and arms of infants, and even to pull away the entire body and leave the head in the uterus. Such occurrences are not altogether uncommon; they often happen."
Death
Semmelweis had left for Venice on March 2, 1847, to escape the many deaths at the Viennese maternity institution, which haunted him. He returned to Vienna on March 20, 1847.
I was immediately ovefuk
by the sad news that Professor [Jakob] Kolletschka, whom I greatly admired, had died in the interim.