For thousands of years， the major cause of premature<br >death among women stemmed directly from pregnancy.<br >As late as the eighteenth century， epidemics of so-called<br >childbirth fever in Paris and Vienna--among the most<br >sophisticated of cities--killed at least one in five women<br >who conceived. Not until the mid-nineteenth century，<br >under the leadership of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis， were med-<br >ical students instructed in such rudimentary hygiene as<br >washing their hands before participating in a delivery. It<br >took another twenty years for the medical profession to<br >finally accept Dr. Semmelweis s theory that unsterile<br >hands transmitted infection in the deliver)， room. Even<br >so， countless people throughout the centuries， and even<br >well into this one， went directly from milking cows to<br >delivering babies without a thought of the inevitable in-<br >fection that would follow. Today， thankfully， maternal<br >death during childbirth is exceedingly rare in developed<br >nations.<br >