The Doctor's Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis W. W. Norton & Company Oct. 2003 isbn: 0393052990 $21.95 Other Books by Sherwin Nuland

Harvard Book Store Author Series Presents:

Harvard Book Store is happy to announce that on Tuesday, October 21st Sherwin B. Nuland will be reading from his new book, The Doctor's Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis.

This book launches a new series of books from W. W. Norton, the Great Discoveries. It brings together renowned writers from diverse backgrounds to tell the stories of crucial scientific breakthroughs - the great discoveries that have gone on to transform our view of the world.

Ignac Semmelweis is remembered for the now commonplace notion that doctors must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-nineteenth-century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea - one that led to his undoing.

Sherwin B. Nuland

Author Biography:

Sherwin B. Nuland, clinical professor of surgery at Yale University School of Medicine, won the National Book Award for How We Die. His other books include The Mysteries Within, The Wisdom of the Body, The Face of Mercy: A Photographic History of Medicine at War, and The Origins of Anesthesia.