Ignaz Semmelweis

Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis discovered in 1847 that hand-washing with a solution of chlorinated lime reduced the incidence of fatal childbed fever tenfold in maternity institutions. However, the reaction of his contemporaries was not positive; his subsequent mental disintegration led to his being confined to an insane asylum, where he died in 1865.

Semmelweis's critics claimed his findings lacked scientific reasoning. The failure of the nineteenth-century scientific community to recognize Semmelweis's findings, and the nature of the flawed critiques outlined below, helped advance a positivist epistemology, leading to the emergence of evidence-based medicine.

I wonder, if this Wiki is still here in some form, 150 years from now... will someone read some of the ideas that are rejected nowdays, and think that there were an sadly misunderstood IgnazSemmelweis among us that had had the right intuition, but was never able to prove it...

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