Harold Pinter Theatre

This was the stage set at the Harold Pinter Theatre as we waited for this evening's performance of Dr Semmelweiss to begin. It was a brilliant play with Mark Rylance excellent as ever in the title role. Dr Semmelweiss was a Hungarian obstetrician working in Vienna in the mid-19th century who identified that high rates of maternal deaths were due to doctors spreading what were later defined as bacteria but he called decaying organic matter. Death rates were much lower on the midwife staffed wards because the midwives, unlike the doctors, did not attend autopsies. He later found that fever could be spread from attending to open wounds in live patients, not just cadavers. The secret was to wash hands in diluted chlorine before entering wards and between treating patients. Death rates fell markedly but Dr Semmelweiss faced resistance as he was challenging the status quo and his findings were never fully accepted in his lifetime whilst the agony of knowing how so many deaths could have been avoided eventually drove him mad. The extra photo is of an illuminated big cat in front of the Royal Festival Hall.