With their bare hands. One man proved it.
They destroyed him for it.
Meet Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, the “Savior of Mothers.”
In 1846 at Vienna General Hospital, two maternity
clinics operated side by side:
The First Clinic (doctors and medical students)
↳ Mortality rate: 10-18%, sometimes spiking to 30%
↳ Women begged on their knees not to be admitted
The Second Clinic (midwives only)
↳ Mortality rate: around 2%
↳ Women fought to get in
Semmelweis was haunted by the dying mothers.
He investigated every possible cause:
↳ Climate? Both clinics in same building.
↳ Overcrowding? Second clinic was MORE crowded.
↳ Fear? He silenced the priest’s bell. Women still died.
Then his friend Dr. Jakob Kolletschka was nicked by a
scalpel during an autopsy. Days later, he was dead.
Semmelweis reviewed the autopsy report.
The pathology was identical to the dying mothers.
The realization hit him:
Medical students started each day dissecting corpses.
Then walked directly to the maternity ward.
Midwives never touched the dead.
Doctors were carrying “cadaverous particles” on their hands.
Semmelweis then ordered all staff to wash hands in
chlorinated lime solution before examining patients.
The results were immediate:
↳ April 1847: 18.3% mortality
↳ May 1847: Hand washing begins
↳ June 1847: 2.2% mortality
↳ July 1847: 1.2% mortality
↳ 1848: Several months at 0%
Despite undeniable evidence, Semmelweis was ridiculed.
↳ Doctors crowed: Gentlemen’s hands weren’t dirty
↳ His theory contradicted medical orthodoxy.
↳ He was dismissed from his position.
Semmelweis’s mental health deteriorated.
In 1865, he was lured into an asylum.
When he tried to escape, guards beat him severely.
During the struggle, he suffered a wound on his hand.
Two weeks later, Ignaz Semmelweis died of sepsis.
The very infection he spent his life trying to prevent.
He was 47 years old.
It took another 20 years for Pasteur and Lister to prove
germ theory and vindicate him.
Today, the “Semmelweis Reflex” describes our tendency
to reject new evidence that contradicts established beliefs.
What evidence are WE ignoring today because it threatens
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