We Don't Have to Wait 40 Years to Do The Right Thing
By now, I thought everyone knew the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, the doctor who tried to get his colleagues to wash their hands in the 1840s. Not only did they refuse to listen, they decided he was crazy.
They had him committed to an asylum.
He died there.
Semmelweis understood the basics of disease transmissions 20 years before Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch confirmed germ theory. He started with a simple problem. There were two maternity clinics at the hospital where he worked. Pregnant women used to get down on their knees and beg for the second clinic. Going to the first clinic was considered a death sentence. Women literally preferred to give birth in the streets, and they did.
Semmelweis followed the data.
Giving birth in the streets was safer. If you went to the first clinic, there was a high chance you'd die from puerperal fever.
Then something else happened.
Semmelweis lost one of his best friends, a physician who died from an infection after getting poked by a dirty scalpa…