Matt Kaplan

And their child would go to the grave with them.

The children would die, too.

It was beyond horrendous, and no one really seemed to care.

There was attention being paid to tuberculosis and smallpox, and that was because men could get it.

Per peril fever, men did not contract, and so there was very little attention paid.

Ignaz Semmelweis, this Hungarian obstetrician,

cared.

And he was an extraordinary individual.

He was so good at what he did.

He had emigrated out of Hungary and was working in Vienna.

Hungary was a vassal state to the Habsburgs, and so it was not unheard of for Hungarians to be working in Vienna.

But Semmelweis watched this infection spread throughout the hospital, regularly losing patients to it, and was stunned by the indifference

by the doctors at the hospital to the disease.

And he set his mind about trying to figure out what caused it and how to stop it spreading.

He worked this out, and I can tell you about that if you like.

And when he revealed the mechanisms, he ultimately got shouted down and thrown out of his post.

Wow.

Well, that's certainly part of it.

But there's so much more to it than that.

Because we remember Galileo as an astronomer of incredible ability, but we forget what an exceptional diplomat Galileo was.