A severe form of blood poisoning, caused by a streptococcal germ, occurring in women following childbirth, and promptly cured by antibiotics. It was at one time called milk fever because it occurred two or three days after delivery and about the time that the breasts became engorged with milk. In the past the disease killed tens of thousands of mothers, and it was not until 1847-49, when Dr. Semmelweis of Vienna made his observations, that its true nature was recognized. Semmelweis was appointed to the Lying-in Hospital in Vienna, which was divided into two halves; in one half the mothers were delivered by nurses and midwives, and in the other half by medical students. Semmelweis noticed that the death rate in mothers delivered by the students was much greater than in those delivered by the midwives and he came to the conclusion that the students, who were also attending the post-mortem room to study the causes of death among corpses, were transmitting something of an unknown nature to the labor wards. Semmelweis therefore installed, outside the post-mortem room, a bath of bleaching powder solution in which the students had to rinse their hands before leaving, and from then on the death rate from childbed fever became equal in both halves of the hospital. His observations were received with scorn by the medical profession at the time. Also called puerperal fever.