09/21/2025
Many ideas that we take for granted today were once thought to be wild, radical, and ridiculous.
Always have an open mind and be receptive to new ideas. Time and constant experimentation will see if they hold water or not.
The History Page
In the 1840s, a Hungarian physician's simple discovery about handwashing would challenge the medical world and cost him his career and his life.
Working in the Vienna General Hospital in 1847, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis was troubled by the high number of new mothers dying from something called puerperal fever, or "childbed fever".
He noticed a strange pattern. The death rate was much higher in the clinic where doctors and medical students worked, compared to a second clinic run only by midwives. 🤔
The doctors and students were often coming straight from performing autopsies to delivering babies. Semmelweis believed they were carrying unseen "cadaverous particles" on their hands from the dead to the living.
To test his idea, he made a new rule. All doctors and students had to wash their hands in a chlorinated lime solution before examining patients. The results were astounding.
The death rate in his clinic dropped from over 18% down to just 1%. It was a medical breakthrough that should have been celebrated. 🩺
Instead, the medical community was offended. Doctors felt insulted by the suggestion that their own hands were unclean and causing deaths. They ridiculed Semmelweis and his simple handwashing theory.
He was eventually pushed out of the hospital. Sadly, his public battles with the medical establishment took a toll, and he was committed to an asylum in 1865, where he died just two weeks later.
His commonsense idea was only accepted years after his death, and today he is remembered as a hero who saved countless lives. 🙏
