Re: Quotes and Knowledge

["Emily Harris" <egharris@bconnex.net>]

"If you know better, then you have an obligation to lead.  Don't give
up." -- Myron Tribus

To me the story of Ignaz Semmelweiss, the Hungarian obstetrician, typifies
the meaning of this quote. It also is an illustration of resistance to new
knowledge.

Semmelweiss disproved the then current theory of "poisonous vapour" as the
cause of sepsis.  He noted that the death rate was high in his department.
The department had 2 wards. Ward 1 was staffed by physicians whose practice
was to do post mortems in the morning and attend to patients later in the
day. Ward 2 was staffed by midwives who never attended post mortems.

In 1846 there were 451 deaths on Ward 1, 90 on Ward 2. Could a poisonous
vapour have more effect on one ward than another? Semmelweiss did not think
so. Then Fate stepped in. His boss died of septecemia after cutting his
finger with a scalpel during an autoposy. Semmelweiss attended the autoposy
and noted that the lesions were similar to those of women who had puerperal
fever. He saw the scalpel as the mechanism of transfer, not the poisonous
vapour.

With his boss gone, Semmelweiss took over as head of obstetrics. He demanded
that before any patient was visited everyone must wash their hands and that
the wards be cleaned with calcium chloride. The death rate on Ward 1 dropped
from 12% to almost 0 in les than 2 years.

When he shared this knowledge with his medical colleagues in Vienna they
were outraged. He was dismissed. Doctors and medical students stopped
washing their hands before seeing patients on Ward 1. The death rate jumped
back to its old level.

Semmelweiss continued his work in Budapest, published what has been called
"one of the epoch-making books of medical literature" in 1861, and it took
another 20 years before his work was accepted.

He knew better. He felt an obligation to lead. He didn't give up.

Emily Harris
============================================================================