THE FEVER OF 1849

A graphic novel by Jim Berry

CONTENTS
The Project
Story Synopsis
Character Study by Ron Randall
The Links


The Project
My goal is to raise funds to finance the design, artwork, and production of a sixty-page, full color graphic novel entitled The Fever of 1849, a story based on the discoveries of the Hungarian doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis.

My experience with this story goes back to 1998 when I first wrote, directed and produced a short narrative film about Semmelweis while a graduate student studying Film Production at New York University. That film, finished in 2001, has gone on to over thirty film festivals and, most recently, screened on Oregon Public Broadcasting's Oregon Lens. The film is also at The Museum of the Moving Image's website as part of their Science Cinematheque online exhibition.

The short film spawned a Fulbright Scholarship that took me to Budapest, Hungary, the birthplace of Semmelweis. And it was there that I wrote the feature length version of the Semmelweis story.

Now, teamed with a fabulous published artist in Aaron Connell and sponsored as a 501c3 through The Allied Arts Foundation of Seattle, my objective is to raise money to hire Aaron to create the artwork.

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STORY SYNOPSIS
The Vienna General Hospital, 1849: One in three new mothers die from Childbed Fever within days of giving birth. Hospital Director Klein deems it, "The price that God has put on the great gift of bearing a child."

But Iganz Semmelweis, First Assistant of the Birthing Ward, cannot believe that it is so. Haunted by the screams that shoot through his ward and the chimes of the death bell as another new mother passes, Semmelweis won't rest until he discovers the cause and the cure of the fever. What he finds, however, is a new way of thinking.

Semmelweis deduced that the Fever was due to the infection that doctors carried with them on their dirty, unwashed hands as they came from the classroom where they performed elaborate dissections on cadavers. Semmelweis' solution; Doctors must wash their hands in chlorine bleach before examining any woman.

While his simple reforms worked immediately, they also threatened the medical establishment. Many doctors resisted, complaining that they shouldn't have to subject themselves to such a humiliating practice. But Semmelweis became obsessed. So much so that he slept in a chair by the door of his ward and would grab at the hands of doctors and smell their fingertips as they entered to ensure that they had washed. And so, for his self-destructive zeal, he was dismissed from his post and his hand washing protocols were abolished.

He was 47 years old when he died in a sanitarium, haunted by the screams of all the women he could never save.

Twenty years later, Pasteur and Lister would establish the germ theory of disease. Finally, Semmelweis got his due when Lister said, "Without Semmelweis, my achievements would be nothing."

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CHARACTER STUDY BY RON RANDALL

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The Links

Tax-deductible contributions are accepted through the Allied Arts Foundation of Seatle. Click here for the Semmelweis graphic novel page.

Check out the Semmelweis prologue with art by Aaron McConnell here.