The great Austro-Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis fascinated Céline from an early age. Semmelweis, the medical revolutionary who desperately fought against the ignorance of his contemporaries, laid the foundations for overcoming the terrible puerperal fever that cost the lives of thousands of women. His struggle and his passionate life, which ended in despair and madness, are recorded by Céline in an expressive, nervous, and dramatic haste that leaves the reader breathless. While almost all of Céline's works have been available in German, this masterpiece is being presented again for the first time since 1937.