impossible to appraise the nature of Semmelweis's disorder. ... It might have been Alzheimer's disease, a type of dementia, which is associated with rapid cognitive decline and mood changes. It might have been third-stage syphilis, a then-common disease of obstetricians who examined thousands of women at gratis institutions, or it might have been emotional exhaustion from overwork and stress.In 1865, János Balassa wrote a document referring Semmelweis to a mental institution. On 30 July, Ferdinand Ritter von Hebra lured him, under the pretense of visiting one of Hebra's "new Institutes", to a Viennese insane asylum located in Lazarettgasse (Landes-Irren-Anstalt in der Lazarettgasse). Semmelweis surmised what was happening and tried to leave. He was severely beaten by several guards, secured in a straitjacket, and confined to a darkened cell. Apart from the straitjacket, treatments at the mental institution included dousing with cold water and administering castor oil, a laxative. He died after two weeks, on 13 August 1865, aged 47, from a gangrenous wound, due to an infection on his right hand which might have been caused by the struggle. The autopsy gave the cause of death as pyemia—blood poisoning. Semmelweis was buried in Vienna on 15 August 1865. Only a few people attended the service. Brief announcements of his death appeared in a few medical periodicals in Vienna and Budapest. Although the rules of the Hungarian Association of Physicians and Natural Scientists specified that a commemorative address be delivered in honor of a member who had died in the preceding year, there was no address for Semmelweis; his death was never even mentioned. János Diescher was appointed Semmelweis's successor at the Pest University maternity clinic. Immediately, mortality rates increased sixfold to 6%, but the physicians of Budapest said nothing; there were no inquiries and no protests. Almost no one—either in Vienna or in Budapest—seems to have been willing to acknowledge Semmelweis's life and work. His remains were transferred to Budapest in 1891. On 11 October 1964, they were transferred once more to the house in which he was born. The house at 1-3 Apród utca is now a museum of medical history, honoring Ignaz Semmelweis. Legacy Semmelweis' advice on chlorine washings was probably more influential than he realized. Many doctors, particularly in Germany, appeared quite willing to experiment with the practical hand washing measures that he proposed—although virtually everyone rejected his basic and ground-breaking innovation: that the disease had only