That Mothers Might Live is a 1938 one-reel short film (ten minutes) directed by Fred Zinnemann.
It tells the story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a pioneering physician in 1840s Vienna. Semmelweis puzzles at the shockingly high death rates of new mothers in his Vienna hospital. Time and again young women give birth seemingly without problems but soon fall ill and are carried to the grave by the mysterious "childbed fever
". After a colleague of his accidentally cuts his hand during an autopsy, and then dies of a fever very similar to childbed fever, Semmelweis suddenly realizes that he and his fellow doctors are the cause of childbed fever. Somehow, they are bringing something from other hospital wards to the maternity wards, something which causes childbed fever in young mothers.
His solution is shockingly simple: Doctors should wash their hands before delivering babies. This practice causes the death rate for new mothers at Semmelweis's hospital to drop to near zero. Yet the old school physicians scorn Semmelweis and are personally offended by his theories, and the doctor suffers a high price.
Fred Zinnemann would go on to a hugely successful career as a feature film director in Hollywood (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, and more).
Tropes:
- Based on a True Story: More or less accurate for a film that tries to recap years of a man's career in ten minutes. One thing the short does not mention is that a knock against Semmelweis's theories back in the day was that he could not explain how doctors were the cause of childbed fever or why the washing of hands stopped the fever. Louis Pasteur and the germ theory of disease were still a couple of decades in the future.
- Death by Childbirth: All about this, as a frustrated young doctor puzzles to understand why so many women in his hospital's maternity ward sicken and die, seemingly for no reason, after giving birth.
- Doomed Moral Victor: Semmelweis's theories are rejected, he is fired, he suffers a mental breakdown, and he dies in an insane asylum, and maternal mortality skyrockets again in his hospital. Yet the later work of Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister paves the way for acceptance of his theories and modern antiseptic hospitals where women can give birth safely.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Semmelweis's sudden realization, after his friend died, that there must be something in the other wards that doctors are carrying with them into the maternity wards, something that is killing young mothers.
- For Doom the Bell Tolls: A young acolyte tolling a bell as a corpse is carried out of the maternity ward spurs Semmelweis to figure out what can be done to stop childbed fever.
- Match Cut: From the clean, bright hallways of a 1938 hospital to the darker, more Gothic-looking hallways of an 1840s hospital.
- Narrator: Instead of having dialogue, all of the action is played out silently, with a narrator (John Nesbitt) telling the story of Ignaz Semmelweis.
- Title Drop: The last line of narration talks about how modern medicine has achieved Semmelweis's goal, "that mothers might live."
