I just read Atul Gawande's Better where there is a good discussion of Semmelweis, Apparently, Semmelweis was an extremely obnoxious nutjob, which is why he was

I just read Atul Gawande's Better where there is a good discussion of Semmelweis, Apparently, Semmelweis was an extremely obnoxious nutjob, which is why he was ignored. When Lister started a lower profile, less obnoxious, program to do basically the same thing a few years later, he was much more successful.