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Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis on discovering the effects of washing your hands before operating on patients. Simple, yet highly effective.

umvi 7y ago
His story is so sad though. He was ostracized by the other doctors and medical community who didn't believe him and indeed openly mocked him. He remained outspoken about his findings until a colleague forced him into an asylum where he was beaten by the guards and died.
- tptacek 7y ago
  They didn't believe him in part because he was a notorious asshole, and in part because he was insistent on a root cause analysis of hand-washing that was clearly false. He also didn't "invent" handwashing, which was already the normal protocol by the time he began practicing; rather, his contribution was a particular antiseptic handwashing protocol (chlorinated lime).
  - eecc 7y ago
    Superficial, disrespectful. There might have been many reasons, not being in tune with the crown wasn't necessarily the worst of the sins.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      I can't tell whether you're saying Semmelweis was merely superficially disrespectful, or whether you're saying I'm being disrespectful. Can you reword this? I don't understand the point you're trying to make.
  - sixstringtheory 7y ago
    How do you figure it was “clearly false”? Once his protocol was implemented, mortality rates from childbed fever plummeted. It turned out the reason so many people had been dying from it was that obstetricians were performing pathological observations on mothers who had died from it and then gone straight to delivering babies without disinfecting in between. This is readily available info on his wikipedia but also recently appeared in an episode of 99PI which is where I learned about it. I’d be interested to see more information presenting an alternative history.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      Antiseptic handwashing wasn't false. His theory for why it worked was; that theory was that "cadaveric particles" --- literally, corpse particles, and very specifically not a more general concept of microscopic infectious agents --- were to blame for ailments, and that chlorinated lime was the only way to get rid of them. Other doctors noted things like ailments in patients with no plausible contact with cadavers, to no avail: Semmelweis was insistent. Semmelweis is, to me, an interesting story about how it's not all that useful to be right if you're unable to persuade, and Semmelweis' difficulties with persuasion have little to do with his adversaries bloody-mindedness and much to do with his.
m463 7y ago
I listened to the Joe Rogan episode on victorian medicine and it made a weird sort of sense: Why wash your hands after being in the morgue if you were just going to get them dirty again with surgery? EDIT: Joe Rogan Episode #1272 - Lindsey Fitzharris

umvi 7y ago

His story is so sad though. He was ostracized by the other doctors and medical community who didn't believe him and indeed openly mocked him. He remained outspoken about his findings until a colleague forced him into an asylum where he was beaten by the guards and died.

tptacek 7y ago
They didn't believe him in part because he was a notorious asshole, and in part because he was insistent on a root cause analysis of hand-washing that was clearly false. He also didn't "invent" handwashing, which was already the normal protocol by the time he began practicing; rather, his contribution was a particular antiseptic handwashing protocol (chlorinated lime).
- eecc 7y ago
  Superficial, disrespectful. There might have been many reasons, not being in tune with the crown wasn't necessarily the worst of the sins.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I can't tell whether you're saying Semmelweis was merely superficially disrespectful, or whether you're saying I'm being disrespectful. Can you reword this? I don't understand the point you're trying to make.
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  How do you figure it was “clearly false”? Once his protocol was implemented, mortality rates from childbed fever plummeted. It turned out the reason so many people had been dying from it was that obstetricians were performing pathological observations on mothers who had died from it and then gone straight to delivering babies without disinfecting in between. This is readily available info on his wikipedia but also recently appeared in an episode of 99PI which is where I learned about it. I’d be interested to see more information presenting an alternative history.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    Antiseptic handwashing wasn't false. His theory for why it worked was; that theory was that "cadaveric particles" --- literally, corpse particles, and very specifically not a more general concept of microscopic infectious agents --- were to blame for ailments, and that chlorinated lime was the only way to get rid of them. Other doctors noted things like ailments in patients with no plausible contact with cadavers, to no avail: Semmelweis was insistent. Semmelweis is, to me, an interesting story about how it's not all that useful to be right if you're unable to persuade, and Semmelweis' difficulties with persuasion have little to do with his adversaries bloody-mindedness and much to do with his.

m463 7y ago

I listened to the Joe Rogan episode on victorian medicine and it made a weird sort of sense: Why wash your hands after being in the morgue if you were just going to get them dirty again with surgery? EDIT: Joe Rogan Episode #1272 - Lindsey Fitzharris