Matt Kaplan

He was charismatic beyond words.

He made all the right friends.

He moved in all the right circles.

When he got into trouble, he was friends with very powerful people who saved his ass.

Semmelweis was from a vassal state with no friends, and he had a habit of putting his foot in his mouth.

Yeah.

and crossing the wrong people in the Vienna circles.

So even though he worked out solutions to preparal fever, and they were extraordinary, he ultimately wasn't listened to, and it was because of a cacophony of causes.

There were so many issues with Semmelweis' interactions that he ultimately shot himself in the foot.

It's incredible.

So Semmelweis followed the scientific method and made notes.

He noticed, for example, there were two wards in this giant hospital.

One was tended to by nurses.

One was tended to by doctors.

And he kept a record of how many patients in each ward over the course of many months got preparal fever.

And he noticed that the infection rate was hovering around 5% to 6% in the ward where nurses were present and about 21% in the ward where doctors were present.

And he thought, well, wait a minute.

I've been told that the sun, the moon, the stars, the wind direction control what diseases we get.

But if that's true, we have the same sun, moon, and stars over the Vienna hospital right now.

Why do we have such a different infection rate?