The women of the world owe a giant debt of gratitude to Hungarian physician Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss.
Mocked and ridiculed by the experts, he was correct that puerperal fever, which killed many mothers, was somehow spread by doctors and nurses who did not disinfect their hands.
The germ theory of infectious disease had yet to be explained in the 1840s, but he was a practical doc, not a theorist.