And to think he could have been saved if those guards had washed their hands before beating him.
The fucked up part is that barely a decade after his death - thanks to the efforts of Louis Pasteur - Semmelweis’s work went from so controversial they condemned him to his death, to becoming the basis for the field of aseptics
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It wasn’t common sense at the time. Germ theory wouldn’t exist for another 20 years after Semmelweis’s discovery. His idea of “corpse particles that might turn a living person into a corpse after contact” seemed superstitious and crazy at the time. It was only after germ theory that we learned that these “corpse particles” were in fact germs.
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I’m sure our assumptions about climate will work out fine though
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Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. All we know is that the climate is changing and we appear to be causing it as the average global temperature reversed and began increasing during what would normally be a cooling period. We also believe that we’re the ones causing it because the increase in temperature correlates with the increase in CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases emitted. Now, of course correlation isn’t causation, but because gases like CO2 are known to have a warming effect due to their ability to trap heat, it makes sense to believe that these gases would contribute to a hotter climate.
It’s entirely possible that, in hindsight, we’ll find that we were panicking over nothing, and that the earth fixes itself or that this is somehow normal. However, that’s a hell of a gamble considering this is our only home in the cosmos. Do you really want to take that gamble?
If we only ever act on things we think we got 100% nailed down, we will either be as ignorant as these fools who locked Semmelweis away or we will stop doing anything at all, because realistically there is always a chance we got some seemingly basic understanding wrong.
The only intelligent thing is to work with a good mix of “what you know” paired with a sane amount of “critical thinking” and an assessment of potentially involved risks.
Covid was also an example (at least here in Germany). People fought against the invonvenience of having to wear masks or stay inside (or get vaccinated) because (as they said) we don’t know for certain how dangerous the illness really is and/or how effectice these measures are.
For me the calculation was simple: doing these measures and being wrong has far far less fatal consequences than being wrong and not doing these measures.
IMO the common sense part isn’t “oh right of course those are germs”, but following the observation that points to some correlation. They don’t have to know or understand the root cause to at least consider (or accept) that something is wrong.
That’s the scientific part. Conventional wisdom, on the other hand, is often neither.
Well, I’m not so sure about that. Consider this:
Quantum Mechanics (QM) makes accurate statements and predictions about a lot of physical experiments.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the theory in especially well-liked, especially among common people. There are a lot of people who think that QM is incorrect, or at least incomplete, simply because it contradicts their intuition.
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But that’s a good thing. If everyone considers the status quo as final, no one would research anything. It’s fine to question stuff, if you at least follow scientific methodologies. Just saying “nah, I don’t buy it” and then leaning back doing nothing is just lazy, and not critical thinking.
If Semmelweis’ s theories were correct, it would have meant that many deaths of their patients would have been easily avoidable. So those other doctors could either ridicule the theory and continue living + practicing in ignorance, or accept the theory and also accept that they had (unknowingly) caused the deaths of many of their patients.
I’m not surprised that they chose the route of ridicule. I’m also not surprised that 20 or 30 years later, when the assistants of the old doctors had become the new generation of doctors, that the theory was then more easily accepted.
But ignorance is only really appreciated in retrospect.
When the ignoramus is contemporary, he knows he’s right. He’s thinking what all the smart modern people are thinking. Of course he’s right.
And any idea that contradicts him (and contradict the modern, right-thinking majority) is clearly foolishness.
So maybe it’s the modern right-thinkers that we need to be wary of.
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Dude just needed a better PR team.
“By the lords blessing washing your hands in holy water and soap allows Christ to deliver the baby”
People would’ve seen the decrease in mortality and he could’ve gotten a selfie with the pope.
But then he’d given The Imaginary Man undeserved credit, and who knows where medicine would be today? so I think it was all for the best
Yeaaa religion set humanity back far enough as is, we need to attribute as little as possible to it
Imagine if Jesus Christ himself was just a benevolent charlatan that tried to codify a good standard of conduct for all his followers (and was then sadly overinterpreted and used for the occasional hate-speech)
Please continue
Semmelweis was also kind of an asshole and would camp out by hospital sinks and yell at staffers for not washing their hands. He had the right idea, but he also had a shit personality which definitely contributed to the “everyone hated him” thing.
It also wasn’t soap and water handwashing. He had them wash in chlorinated lime, which did turn out to be effective in killing germs but also wasn’t the most pleasant stuff to be constantly putting your hands in.
What I’m wondering is why the midwives for some reason had cleaner hands hand the male doctors?
The doctors at the hospital where this happened were also doing autopsies and would often go directly from an autopsie to the delivery ward without washing their hands.
The midwives did not perform autopsies.
It was not that the midwives’ hands were especially clean, it was that the Dr’s hands were very contaminated.
I think once when this was posted they said doctors would see other patients and even perform autopsies then do surgeries with no hand washing between.
They weren’t dealing with other sick people I imagine. Also I bet they tended spend more time with each patient since they only did one specialist task.
Are you really wondering?
State your case and move on. You are probably filled with foolish ideas too. We all are. All you can do is grow.
I have no idea what you are on about, but yes I am genuinely wondering
Did you not research the phenomenon a bit? Google it?
One hypothesis is that they didn’t touch the stuff that the doctors touched.
I mean I’m getting that your question is rhetorical. Which is to say it doesn’t get to the point quickly. And I think you’d be better off getting to the point quickly. So you can move on to more meaningful investigations.
You’re an ass, go away
Gee, sorry.
There was nothing rhetorical about the question. He asked a question. Rhetorical doesn’t mean anything about getting to the point quickly. It means a question that doesn’t need an answer.
A rhetorical question avoids getting to the point because getting to the point is not the point of rhetoric. The point of rhetoric is emotional effect. Therefore when swift and easy arrival at the point is eschewed (a moment’s google), and an emotional effect is clearly evident, then rhetoric is clearly the point.
Tangentially, consider the phenomenon of “smugnorance”.
And his question wasn’t beating around the bush. He literally just asked a question. It wasn’t rhetorical. Just because you say it’s rhetorical doesn’t make it rhetorical. Rhetorical.
And repeating your thesis sways me not at all.
Have you tried whacking yourself in the head with a rock?
What the actual fuck is your problem? Completely insufferable.
I can’t wait to see what future generations will remark “I can’t believe they lived in a world without that knowledge” about our time.
Plastic
Vsauce2 made a great video about him: https://youtu.be/okOfvMY5wOI
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/okOfvMY5wOI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Is this real and accurate?
Title gore…
Not really, they just forgot a word. Should be “what do you mean…”
“What do you mean things are so small that we can’t see them with the human eye?”
I’ll fix the typo once Jerboa is working again. Seems to be the only app I can use to edit a post with.
Huh. I thought that was the big difference from Reddit, you could edit posts. I guess it’s only post text not titles…
So far I think it depends on the app. I mostly use Sync which I suspect looks at Lemmy from a Reddit functionality point of view. As I recall you can’t edit post titles so I suspect the app doesn’t even include the option or it’s a paid feature.
When I use Jerboa there’s more options like editing post titles, and seeing the various up and down vote counts plus the total for posts/comments. In Sync it’s just the total of the upvotes/downvotes. I’m sure there’s more differences but these are the big ones I’ve seen so far.
Interesting. Maybe I’ll have to give Jerboa another look. Hoping we’ll have more choices in both mature apps and features down the road…
Jerboa has been upgraded since the summer. There was some stuff with swipe navigation which was an issue for my use case but I think that’s been changed along with many other things now. It should be my daily driver now over Sync but muscle memory so far is keeping it from not being yet.
That’s definitely
nottrue apparently.What app do you use that allows you to edit?
Sync.
Same here but no option to edit a post.
*edit only comments it seems
What do you mean “things so small we can’t see them with the human eye?”
Like Nietschze; I mean the official theory ist that he contracted syfilis as a young man and therefore later in his life ended up in an insane asylum; which of course was fathomable and apparently happend a lot in the end of the 19th century. I for myself kinda choose to stick to the theory that he just couldn’t take the world view he created for himself anymore and the ignorance of the vast majority, so that he also had something like a ‘nervous breakdown’ that landed him in such a place. But well, I guess that’s just trivia or the ramblings of another mad man… 😜cheers
It is a pretty confident bet that mental illness is caused by mental illness not philosophy
All modern smart people know what the truth is. Always have. Always will.
I can’t believe that you take dreams seriously. Everybody knows they’re just hallucinations.
Afterlife? Reincarnation? It’s just fantasies.
A creator of the universe? Crazy.
Little people. Spirits. Sure people reported seeing them for thousands of years. But now we know better.
Don’t be crazy.
I know I’m beating this point into the dirt. But seriously.
Semmelweis’s hypothesis is testable. None of what you mentioned is.
Have you tried conducting the relevant experiments? That’s how we test such things.
Give us your experimental designs to verify or falsify all the things you listed:
Afterlife
Reincarnation
A creator of the universe
Little people
Spirits
I personally believe none of it but show me how it can be proven using the scientific method.
Ok.
Environments suggesting an afterlife may be encountered via certain meditation techniques.
Interviews with children who recall past lives suggests reincarnation.
Something fitting the description of a “creator of the universe” may be observed via certain meditation techniques.
Little people. Hmm. You got me there. But the literature is filled with reports. I hear that frequent fasting is good.
Spirits. I’d advise hallucinogens.
And of course, these methods are unavoidably esoteric and depthy.
Environments suggesting an afterlife may be encountered via certain meditation techniques.
What is your control group for this?
Does people not experiencing this while mediating prove it does not exist. (I have been practising meditation for 20 years and have no indication of this)
Interviews with children who recall past lives suggests reincarnation.
Do interviews with children who do not recall pass lives invalidate this?
Something fitting description of a “creator of the universe” may be encountered via certain meditation techniques.
What is your control group for this?
Does people not experiencing this while mediating prove it does not exist. (I have been practising meditation for 20 years and have no indication of this)
Little people. Hmm. You got me there. But the literature is filled with reports.
Literature is filled with shit people made up, it proves nothing scientifically.
And of course, these methods unavoidably esoteric and depthy.
Exactly, none of what you wrote is based on the scientific method.
The scientific method consists of observation and talking about what you observed. The rest is accounting.
And tho I appreciate balanced books as much as anybody, let’s not let that distract us from our first step in any scientific investigation : Observation.
Which leads us to these methods that I roughed out for you there.
But if these methods are not your cup of tea then you can only blame yourself.
And if you prefer to ignore those who have gone where you have not, then, again, you can only blame yourself.
Observation is not looking at something and drawing a conclusion. It is noticing something, looking into that something, and then designing a controlled environment to test your observations to see whether you observed correctly.
I can’t look at an apple for the first time and tell you whether or not it is ripe. I would first need to know what an apple should look like when it’s ripe based on what I find, and then make sure that an apple is ripe when it is in a certain condition.
So many of us think of ourselves as smart and sensible while actually being as locked into the paradigm of the hour as a 13th century religious zealot. Same insanity, different century.
