With all the revelations about the University of East Anglia Climactic Research Unit and their subversion of the peer review process, the scientific method, hiding/losing the source data, and the suppression of dissent, I thought I’d start a series looking at historical incidents of (loosely) similar types of behavior. This blog is primarily a game/MRA venue, so do not fret, we’ll be getting back to that content shortly. The positive thing to keep in mind is that the process of science eventually proves these individuals were correct or mostly correct. The negative, well, typically careers were destroyed and sometimes lives were lost.
My reason for starting this series is that our modern dumbed down society has been structured to accept the pronouncements of Science and Scientists without any critical thought or skepticism. Scientists are human beings with the same petty empire building, often with a lack of social skills, and many with a blind faith in their ideology.
How many of you have heard of Ignaz Semmelweis? My guess is not many. We all should know of Louis Pasteur’s and his germ theory of disease. Even Joseph Lister is remembered for his promotion of sterile surgery and the use of carbolic acid as a disinfectant. Before either of these two men was Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis. Semmelweis was born in Buda, in the Kingdom of Hungary of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1818. In 1837, Dr. Semmelweis went to Vienna to study law but ended up changing his studies to medicine. In 1846, Dr. Semmelweis was appointed as an assistant to one of the medical professors at the First Obstetrical Clinic of the Vienna General Hospital.
At this particular teaching hospital there were two wards. One where medical students would examine and deliver babies, and one where mid-wives would examine and deliver babies. Many of the women coming to the clinics begged to be admitted to the mid-wives ward because it was commonly know that there was a higher mortality rate in the first ward with the medical students.
A disease know as puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever, was killing off mothers at a rate of 10%-30% in the first ward, but in the second ward with the mid-wives the rate was closer to 2%. Semmelweis set out to discover why the difference existed.
Now in this particular era, doctors believed in the miasma theory of disease, ie the belief that bad air/ poisonous vapor caused diseases. They also still believed in the four humors and dyscrasia theory of the make up and working of the human body. The four humors theory was a hold over from Hippocrates’ time, ie 5th/4th centure BCE (amazing how little medical science progressed in 2200+ years). Doctors believed that each incidence of disease was unique to each individual patient.
Semmelweis examined the differences between the two wards. He determined that it couldn’t be over crowding of the ward because more women went to the mid-wives ward than the doctors ward. It couldn’t be the techniques used in the wards as those were essentially similar. Religious practices? Nope, same. Climate? Obviously not. The only difference he could come up with was the people who worked in the ward. The doctoral students typically would come to the ward after performing autopsies on patients that had died the previous day. Semmelweis believed there were cadaverous particles still on the hands of the students and that this was spreading puerperal fever. His solution was for the students to wash their hands in chlorinated lime (essentially bleach) in order to remove the cadaverous particles. The result? Incidents of puerperal fever declined to levels below that of the midwives ward.
How did the medical community take his pronouncements? For the most part they appear to have been rejected. Not wholesale, as some hospitals did incorporate his procedures. Many Doctors did not like the implication that their hands were unclean as they saw themselves as gentlemen. Semmelweis was dismissed from Vienna due to what appears to be some combination of professional jealousy, Semmelweis’ social incompetence, and an revolutionary uprising in Hungary. It wasn’t until approximately 20 years later, and roughly 2 years after Semmelweis’ death that Joseph Lister started to experiment with disinfecting wounds, and surgical instruments applying Louis Pasteur’s recommendations to control the spread of disease.
Here are the sources for this post. one. two. three. four. five. six.
