Which puts them in the beautiful company of the rest of humanity.

Edit: Also Semmelweis was a badass.

We have this interesting idea that modern medicine is what is responsible for greatly extending life expectancy. Semmelweis's work largely showed at least in his day that for women it was the opposite (remember his work started with the question of why midwives had so much lower maternal mortality rates than physicians), and even today, it is probably a distant third behind year-round food supply and modern sanitation.