The biggest breakthrough in health: The inconvenient truth
The story we'd rather not hear anymore. Dr. Semmelweiss who discovered where puerperal fever came from. And was imprisoned in an asylum as a thank you.
In the 19th century, free or low-cost maternity hospitals were set up across Europe to combat infant mortality and promote medicine. Poor women were very happy about this. The Vienna General Hospital even had 2 maternity hospitals. Doctors worked in the first clinic, midwives in the second. In the clinic with the midwives, an average of around 4 percent died during childbirth. In the clinic with the doctors, that number was at least twice as high. And in some years, the death rate even exceeded ten percent.
Something went wrong there.
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a young resident doctor, compared the state of affairs in both clinics and came up with an explanation for the difference between the two in 1847. The doctors in the first clinic studied anatomy by dissecting corpses and then walked straight into the maternity hospital without washing their hands to help the world's babies. The midwives in the second clinic were not concerned with corpses. Semmelweis' theory was that something was transferred through the doctors' hands, which is why he introduced antiseptic hand soap in the first clinic. The result: the number of infections and deaths fell drastically.
Semmelweis colleagues informed the medical community about his results in the hope of saving thousands of lives. After all, this was fantastic news! However, Semmelweis' ideas were ridiculed or misunderstood.
Historians have come to the conclusion that Semmelweis thought his ideas were very logical and would catch on quickly. That is why he only wrote an article in 1858 and a book about his findings only in 1861. His ideas were dismissed in counter-articles and textbooks. Bad practices continued and good ideas were rejected.
It was simply inconceivable that doctors made healthy people sick.
After criticizing his book in 1861, Semmelweis wrote fierce letters to medical leaders across Europe, much to the anger of fellow doctors. In 1865, two of them arranged for him to be admitted to a clinic for the mentally ill, where he was beaten and, after two weeks, died of an infection. His replacement as head of the Pest maternity hospital in Hungary abolished hand washing. The death rate increased tenfold.
No one opened their mouth.
Practicing physicians continued to resist the idea of washing their hands before treating a patient for another 75 years. The proof was there, but the change was delayed.
The moral of the story: going too hard against consensus; it's not appreciated. People can't imagine things. People with status, doctors, virologists don't like to look 'around the corner'. And if you do, you have a chance of being admitted to a clinic for the mentally ill.
#SMPL72 #fulvinezuur #fulvicacids #Virologie
