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SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY: INVENTION & TEST

Carl G. Hempel, Germany (1905-1997)

Carl Gustav Hempel brought our attention to 19th-century Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis and his investigations in the systematic discovery of the solution to a scientific problem. 

In this essay, Hempel talks about the important aspects of scientific inquiry. A scientific inquiry carries on several assumptions and testing to get to the invention of scientific discovery. The formulation of scientific discovery often involves formulating hypotheses, testing predictions and an interdisciplinary search in the real world. The writer tries to say that one should formulate a good hypothesis, test the possible conditions and reach the conclusion. One should observe the situation minutely then after understanding the problems we can formulate the hypothesis. 

To elaborate on his theory, Hempel talks about the research conducted by Ignaz Semmelweis who discovers the main cause of the death of a large number of women who delivered babies in the First Division at Vienna General Hospital. He was distressed to see the death of women after delivering the babies. According to him, during the years from 1844 -1848 at the Vienna General Hospital large number of women and children died whilst delivering their babies. There were two Maternity Divisions in the hospital. In comparison to the Second Maternity Division, the number of infected babies and mothers in the First was high in proportion. The children who were delivered in the first department contracted a serious and often fatal illness known as puerperal fever or childbed fever. To address this problem, the commission was set to diagnose the cause of fatal diseases and death of the babies. 

He began by considering various explanations that were current at the time; some of these he rejected out of hand as incompatible with well-established facts; others he subjected to specific tests.

After the superficial study, it was suggested that there was overcrowding in the First Maternity Division but in a real sense, there was more crowding environment in the Second Division. Then it is noticed that the cause might be the untrained doctors or On the Job Training (OJT) students might be responsible factors for the infection since they treat without perfection. To solve the problem, they decrease the number of On Job Training students in that division but the infected number did not decrease.  

There were various explanations but none of those solved the problems. At last, the research of Semmelweis reached to the significant conclusion that the women in the First Division died due to blood poisoning. 

At last, early in 1847, an accident gave Semmelweis the decisive clue for his solution of the problem. A colleague of his, Kolletschka, received a puncture wound in the finger, from the scalpel of a student with whom he was performing an autopsy, and died after an agonising illness during which he displayed the same symptoms that Semmelweis had observed in the victims of childbed fever. 

The similarities between the course of Kolletschka's disease and that of the women in his clinic led Semmelweis to the conclusion that his patients had died of the same kind of blood poisoning: he, his colleagues, and the medical students had been the carriers of the infectious material, for him and his associates used to come to the wards directly from performing dissections in the autopsy room, and examine the women in labour after only superficially washing their hands, which often retained a characteristic foul odour.

Semmelweis put his idea to a test. He reasoned that if he were right, then childbed fever could be prevented by chemically destroying the infectious material adhering to the hands. He, therefore, issued an order requiring all medical students to wash their hands in a solution of chlorinated lime before making an examination. The mortality from childbed fever promptly began to decrease, and for the year 1848, it fell to 1.27 per cent in the First Division, compared to 1.33 in the Second.

In further support of his idea, or of his hypothesis, as we will also say, Semmelweis notes that it accounts for the fact that the mortality in the Second Division consistently was so much lower: the patients there were attended by midwives, whose training did not include anatomical instruction by dissection of cadavers.

The doctors and medical students used to come to the First Division from the autopsy room without washing their hands properly, and they used to examine the women who delivered babies. Similarly, there was a provision that the midwives examining patients in the Second Division did not require autopsy-related training, so the death rate among the women they examined was low in the Second Division. Similarly, infected mothers transmitted the infection to their babies as well. Ultimately, when the doctors and trainees washed their hands properly and examined the women, the mortality rate in the First Division got significantly decreased. 

The essay can be interpreted as how important and serious the clinical and medical field is in human life. Furthermore, it tries to expose the way of scientific research based on hypothesis, observation, experience and then towards diagnosis.

Related Questions

  1. What was Ignaz Semmelweis's Problem?
  2. What is the difference between induction and deduction according to Hempel?

Answer:-

  • DEDUCTION
    • All men are Mortal
    • Ravi is a man.
    • Ravi is Mortal
  • INDUCTION
    • Frog 1 died at time t1...
    • Frog 2 died at time t2...
    • Frog 3 died at time t3...
      • All Frogs are Mortal

Bibliography

Hempel, C. G. (2013). Scientific Inquiry: Invention and Test. In M. Nissani, & S. Lohani, Flax Golden Tales: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Learning English (pp. 190-194). Kathmandu, Nepal: Ekta Books.

Hempel CG, editor. Philosophy of Natural Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; 1966. Scientific inquiry: Invention and test. 

Nuland SB. New York: W.W. Norton; 2003. The Doctors’ Plague: Germs, Childhood Fever, and Strange Story of Ignaz Semmelweis.

Syed Ahsan Raza. (2017, 04). Theory of Scientific Investigation by Hempel and a Case of Semmelweis . Retrieved from ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322004577_Theory_of_scientific_investigation_by_Hempel_and_a_case_of_Semmelweis.



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