sepsis

Term: sepsis:

Origin:  Anc Greek σήψις/sepsis(=putrefaction)

>σαθρός/σαπρός/sapros(=rotten, mature, old)

Coined: by Hippocrates (ca. 460-370 BC). The obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865) at the Vienna General Hospital was the first who succeeded in lowering the mortality rate to his hospital by introducing handwashing with a chlorinated lime solution before every gynaecological examination. In 1863, he publish his work "Aetiology, terminus and prophylaxis of puerperal fever" (Die Aetiologie, der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers). Semmelweis developed  psychiatric symptoms and he died from a wound infection probably as a result of the beatings he underwent there.

The French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) correlated microbes with disease and he established the sterilisation of fluids by heating.

In 1914 German Hugo Schottmüller (1867-1936), defined the term of sepsis using a modern sense:

"Sepsis is present if a focus has developed from which pathogenic bacteria, constantly or periodically, invade the blood stream in such a way that this causes subjective and objective symptoms." …..A therapy should not be directed against bacteria in the blood but against the released bacterial toxins …"

Definition:

The presence of bacteria or their toxins in the blood or in other tissue of the body.

Source

http://

sepsis-gesellschaft.de/DSG/Englisch/What+is+Sepsis%3F/Sepsis+History?iid=1