Key Concepts
We need the truth.
We might not like the truth.
We must accept the truth.
Audrey Rindlisbachers used this story as an example about how some people will reject truth.
Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian doctor who is known as the father of Hand Hygiene. He worked in the Vienna General Hospital in Austria around the 1840s to 1850s.
There were two different clinics: the first where doctors taught students as well as treated sick people and assisted with births, the second dedicated to births only assisted by midwives.
The amount of deaths from births were widely different between the two clinics. From 1841 to 1846 the first clinic had 237 deaths, whereas the second only had 86. Ignaz began to wonder what the difference between the clinics was.
He came up with a hypothesis saying that it was because of the germs found on hands (although he wouldn’t have put it that way because germs had not been discovered yet).
In the first hospital, they dissected bodies as part of the training. At the time, they didn’t know about germs so they wouldn’t wash their hands thoroughly between dissections and treating patients and dissecting.
Ignaz introduced a chlorine hand wash, since this solution was already best to take away the stench off the doctors’ hands.
The doctors began washing their hands before helping sick patients and the number of deaths rapidly decreased. Here is a diagram from 1841 to 1849
The red line is when he introduced the chlorine hand wash.
The death rate went from 30% to 5%.
No one understood how it worked, but they knew that it did work, which is why Ignaz was heartbroken when they stomped on his idea. The doctors didn’t want to admit that they were the reasons for so many deaths in the hospital. They began to ridicule him, and sent him mean letters.
He soon fell into a deep depression and began drinking. He was deceived into entering an insane asylum in 1865. When he tried to escape, he was beaten to death by the guards.
The doctors didn’t want to accept the truth that it was their fault so many patients had died.
That’s all for my notes on The Truth Shall Make You Free, MDT Level 1! Hope you learned something, and have a wonderful day. God bless! <3
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Very well done! Tragic ending. Scientists aren’t always in the right.
Thank you! Yup.