Ignaz Semmelweiss
#coherentism
I’m doing this all from memory, this isn’t exactly a historical document.
Ignaz Semelweis was a doctor in early modernity, back before germ theory was really a thing. As story would have it, Dr. Semelweis noticed that pregnant women were dying more commonly in hospitals than if they had just given birth at home (from a certain type of fever). Semelweis further noticed that if doctors washed their hands in an alcohol solution, they would have far fewer deaths. Now a modern reader will immediately realize that germs are being transferred by unwashed hands, the doctors moving from patient to patient spreading disease. Semelweis still urged doctors to wash their hands to prevent disease, but was ridiculed because his theories implied that gentlemanly, professional doctors were unclean. He died, his theories never really having been taken seriously, in an insane asylum.
I related quite a bit to Semelweis when I was younger. It was frustrating to me to see problems with global warming, war, famine which I felt could be easily solved if everyone “just listened to the experts’’. If we lived in a rational world, there would be so much less suffering.
Truth is, Semelweis was an asshole. It’s unfortunate that his theories were never taken seriously, but it was less that the medical establishment was laughing at a kook, and more that Ignaz never tried to be personable.
I feel like what I’ve learned about Semelweis and my views of him reflect my own growth in maturity. I still absolutely believe that we should listen to doctors and scientists, but that notion of intellectual superiority has lost its sheen. The world is complex, and listening to objective truth would be fantastic, if objective truth was a reasonable thing in the first place.
