Jakob Kolletschka

Who was Jakob Kolletschka?

Jakob Kolletschka 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."