The article is just a piece of the story told by Creighton. Semmelweis tried to get his doctors to wash their hands after dissecting cadavers and before delivering babies...initially they refused this outlandish idea, but when he finally convinced them to do so, they started having survival rates that matched the midwives in the hospital. Of course, he was drummed out of the medical field, and it took another 50 years for doctors to start washing their hands.