The fucked up part is that barely a decade after his death - thanks to the efforts of Louis Pasteur - Semmelweis's work went from so controversial they condemned him to his death, to becoming the basis for the field of aseptics
What do mean things so small we can't see them with the human eye? Are you crazy?
Submitted 11 months ago by WashedOver@lemmy.ca to [deleted]
https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/ddc212cd-28cc-42eb-a098-8a3ccc0340d2.jpeg
Comments
Th4tGuyII@kbin.social 11 months ago
recapitated@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Florence Nightingale made some important public contributions here as well
AtariDump@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I know that effect!
“That’s the Florence Nightingale effect. It happens in hospitals when nurses fall in love with their patients.”
But what was George doing in that tree?
tygerprints@kbin.social 11 months ago
Never suggest common sense to people who are raised in ignorance. Too much of a new idea will always be a huge threat to them, though nobody knows why.
SuperIce@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It wasn’t common sense at the time. Germ theory wouldn’t exist for another 20 years after Semmelweis’s discovery. His idea of “corpse particles that might turn a living person into a corpse after contact” seemed superstitious and crazy at the time. It was only after germ theory that we learned that these “corpse particles” were in fact germs.
tygerprints@kbin.social 11 months ago
I know I remember seeing a documentary about all this and how surgeons who frequently did autopsies at that time would often cut themselves, develop a fever and die from septic shock, never having learned that they maybe should wash their hands after playing with dead tissue. Germ theory wasn't even a theory then, because people didn't have any idea there could be such a thing as germs.
It makes me wonder what would people in the Renaissance or middle ages say, if we were to travel back in time and talk about dinosaurs. I'm sure they'd lock us up as mentally ill. How could there ever have been such a thing as gigantic mega-lizards walking around on earth!
From the micro to the macroscopic it's funny how we humans always have to learn things very slowly and only after making many incorrect assumptions.
aksdb@feddit.de 11 months ago
IMO the common sense part isn’t “oh right of course those are germs”, but following the observation that points to some correlation. They don’t have to know or understand the root cause to at least consider (or accept) that something is wrong.
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If Semmelweis’ s theories were correct, it would have meant that many deaths of their patients would have been easily avoidable. So those other doctors could either ridicule the theory and continue living + practicing in ignorance, or accept the theory and also accept that they had (unknowingly) caused the deaths of many of their patients.
I’m not surprised that they chose the route of ridicule. I’m also not surprised that 20 or 30 years later, when the assistants of the old doctors had become the new generation of doctors, that the theory was then more easily accepted.
cameron_vale@lemm.ee 11 months ago
But ignorance is only really appreciated after the fact.
When the ignoramus is contemporary, he knows he’s right. He’s thinking what all the smart modern people are thinking. Of course he’s right.
And any ideas that contradict him (and contradict the modern, right-thinking majority) are clearly foolishness.
So maybe it’s the modern right-thinkers that we need to be wary of.
tygerprints@kbin.social 11 months ago
IT's the Dunning-Kruger effect - people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria. And they tend to only value the criteria that validate their own points of view. What we really lack is the eagerness to know all sides of an issue and take them into account.
CluckN@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Dude just needed a better PR team.
“By the lords blessing washing your hands in holy water and soap allows Christ to deliver the baby”
People would’ve seen the decrease in mortality and he could’ve gotten a selfie with the pope.
bratosch@lemm.ee 11 months ago
But then he’d given The Imaginary Man undeserved credit, and who knows where medicine would be today? so I think it was all for the best
TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Yeaaa religion set humanity back far enough as is, we need to attribute as little as possible to it
Katana314@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Imagine if Jesus Christ himself was just a benevolent charlatan that tried to codify a good standard of conduct for all his followers (and was then sadly overinterpreted and used for the occasional hate-speech)
SkippingRelax@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Please continue
DrMango@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Semmelweis was also kind of an asshole and would camp out by hospital sinks and yell at staffers for not washing their hands. He had the right idea, but he also had a shit personality which definitely contributed to the “everyone hated him” thing.
derf82@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It also wasn’t soap and water handwashing. He had them wash in chlorinated lime, which did turn out to be effective in killing germs but also wasn’t the most pleasant stuff to be constantly putting your hands in.
bratosch@lemm.ee 11 months ago
What I’m wondering is why the midwives for some reason had cleaner hands hand the male doctors?
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 11 months ago
The doctors at the hospital were also doing autopsies and would go directly from an autopsies to the delivery ward without washing their hands.
The midwives did not perform autopsies.
It was not that the midwives' hands were especially clean, it was that the Dr's hands were very contaminated.
Kage520@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I think once when this was posted they said doctors would see other patients and even perform autopsies then do surgeries with no hand washing between.
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They weren’t dealing with other sick people I imagine. Also I bet they tended spend more time with each patient since they only did one specialist task.
cameron_vale@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Are you really wondering?
State your case and move on. You are probably filled with foolish ideas too. We all are. All you can do is grow.
bratosch@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I have no idea what you are on about, but yes I am genuinely wondering
Orbituary@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Title gore…
lookorex@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not really, they just forgot a word. Should be “what do you mean…”
Orbituary@lemmy.world 11 months ago
“What do you mean things are so small that we can’t see them with the human eye?”
bartolomeo@suppo.fi 11 months ago
I can’t wait to see what future generations will remark “I can’t believe they lived in a world without that knowledge” about our time.
crimroy@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Plastic
Karaatti@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Vsauce2 had a great video about him: youtu.be/okOfvMY5wOI
NENathaniel@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Is this real and accurate?
moodwrench@lemmy.world 11 months ago
According to nationalgeographic.co.uk/…/wash-your-hands-was-on… Yes, it’s true
cameron_vale@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I can’t believe that you take dreams seriously. Everybody knows they’re just hallucinations.
Afterlife? Reincarnation? It’s just fantasies.
A creator of the universe? Crazy.
Little people. Spirits. Sure people reported seeing them for thousands of years. But now we know better.
Don’t be crazy.
I know I’m beating this point into the dirt. But seriously.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Semmelweis’s hypothesis is testable. None of what you mentioned is.
cameron_vale@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Have you tried conducting the relevant experiments? That’s how we test such things.
cameron_vale@lemm.ee 11 months ago
So many of us think of ourselves as smart and sensible while actually being as locked into the paradigm of the hour as a 13th century religious zealot. Same insanity, different century.
cameron_vale@lemm.ee 11 months ago
All modern smart people know what truth is. Always have. Always will.
progbob@feddit.de 11 months ago
Like Nietschze; I mean the official theory ist that he contracted syfilis as a young man and therefore later in his life ended up in an insane asylum; which of course was fathomable and apparently happend a lot in the end of the 19th century. I for myself kinda choose to stick to the theory that he just couldn’t take the world view he created for himself anymore and the ignorance of the vast majority, so that he also had something like a ‘nervous breakdown’ that landed him in such a place. But well, I guess that’s just trivia or the ramblings of another mad man… 😜cheers
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It is a pretty confident bet that mental illness is caused by mental illness not philosophy
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 11 months ago
And to think he could have been saved if those guards had washed their hands before beating him.