Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Ignaz Semmelweis

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

This week on Sawbones, it's the fascinating, inspiring and infuriating story of Ignaz Semmelweis. You'll learn how he discovered why it was so important for doctor's to wash their hands and why it took so long for doctors to believe him.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, of misguided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McRoy. And I'm Sydney McRoy. Hey Justin. Hey sister. How's it going? Good. You had a good day so far? What's it been like?

You know, it's a little bit, uh, you know, unusual still, but you know, I get working into a routine, I wake up, and I wash my hands, and then I brush my teeth, and then I wash my hands, and I take a shower, and then I wash my hands, which that actually, that one feels... Maybe excessive. Maybe a little excessive.

Maybe a little excessive there. So a lot of hand washing, I would say. I like it. I don't know why I never tried it before, honestly, because I kind of find it soothing. You moisturizing in there? washing, I would say. I like it. I don't know why I never tried it before, honestly, because I kind of find it soothing. You moisturizing in there? Oh, you know me. You're gonna wash your hands a lot.

You gotta moisturize. I can't keep, well, it's hard, because I'm not allowed to keep moisturizers next to the bed anymore, like I used to for my dry cracked hands, because you make fun of me for having moisturizers next to the bed, and you say it's for ill use.

I will say no more than that. I do not say ill use, that is not. I'm it's for ill use. I will say no more than that. I do not say ill use. That is not. Yes, you have a great. Not follow the ill use. I would just say that that's a private time. It's not though. It's just for my dry cracked hands and you know that.

It's been 15 years. But there's no shaming here. It's not ill use. You do. So they're shaming upstairs. I say maybe put it inside your nightstand If it's not I'm not a private time thing. It's just for my dry crack Heads, but it looks like a private time thing. Okay. Well, okay

Justin do you know why we know how important washing our hands is No, I told us that it feels right. It feels good I will say it does feel good It is weird to think there was a time when we didn't because it feels so right. I think it would be fun to be one of the first people who's like, well, this is fun. This is nice.

This is like a little bath for my hands. I get it. This is hilarious. Well, that was not the impetus behind our... That must have been awkward though, but their hands, like turn on the shower and then put their hands into the shower to wash them. Cause they, why would they have sinks?

You're sick. You're sick. I guess. I mean, we washed other things. Well, of course, but we used the bathtub for that. We would have the help bring in hot buckets of water. No, no. We washed over the fire and then we would take a bath

and this is like a- Not like dishes and stuff. We wash dishes. Yeah, well, you, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, there. That's true. That's a fair point. Anyway, I want to tell you about the guy who is responsible for all the hand washing. I mean, indirectly, I guess. I mean, he's, he didn't warn us about coronavirus necessarily. No, I shouldn't say necessarily. He did not. But thanks for the heads up whoever we're talking about. Ignore Simu Vice is who I want to talk about. We have mentioned him on the show. I figured that was the one. I figured that was the one. Did it out of your system? You said I could have one, so I burned it early.

All right. We have mentioned him on the show before, and I actually, in my head, we'd done an episode completely devoted to him. And then as we were, he was the Google doodle recently, was Semmelvice. And so I started thinking, did we actually, or did I just, do I just feel like I know him that well? Do I just feel a kinship with him? Sure. And I assumed I had.

And I looked back and we have not devoted an episode to this very important historical medical, medical historical, whichever you prefer, figure. So I wanted to like tell his story. I think we all know that he's, well, if you listen to the show, you probably know, he's the reason we wash our hands. But how exactly did he go about figuring that out? And who was he? And then I think it's interesting to talk about why it didn't catch on then? Because this is not the story of when people first started

washing their hands to prevent infection. It is the story of when people almost started washing their hands to prevent infection, but then didn't, but then did later. Yeah. And so I thought that would be worth exploring a little bit further. Let's dive in. So Simmelvice was born in 1818 in Hungary. He was the fifth of 10 kids and he initially set out on a course to, I know you always shake

your head when we talk about people who have lots of kids because you were very done it too. I was very done it too. I shouldn't blame it on you. We too is all we can handle. Yeah. If you can handle more than that got more power to you. He started out studying law but then for some reason he decided after a year medicines better I mean I can't say I blame him. There we go. Here she goes. She always has to tear me down. You know you're not a lawyer. Especially a lawyer as I am a doctor. Nah, law's great, but he preferred medicine. So he...

I have a free membership to rocket lawyer. I will let you know, so. What is that? It's like an online, you know, where they like prepare legal documents for you. I made a bet with our friend Michael Beck and it was a wager and we needed a legal document for the bat. Right.

Okay. I got you. Free count. Okay. Because the way you said it, I thought you could become a lawyer very quickly through something called Rocket Lawyer and I know that does not seem. That seems a little sketchy. That is how I would do it.

But this does not feel right. Yeah. So he could not find, he initially sought an appointment in internal medicine. He couldn't find one, so he decided to switch to obstetrics and study that instead. And he rose to a position that was essentially chief resident. That was basically, he was like first assistant,

which would be akin to the position we now call like first resident, which, or chief resident, which having been a chief resident, I would define as having to do a lot of extra work and having a lot of extra responsibility and in return, getting no money for it. For no more money than anyone else. Looks great in your CV though, on your CV.

That's true. Your curriculum veritain, as you all say. Yeah, I don't know. anyone else looks great in your CV though on your CV that's true curriculum verite as you all say yeah I don't know I was just I stayed where I train and I don't think it made a difference so sometimes I worry I got tricked into like you got voted chief resident yeah you can do all the sex to work yay I don't know anyway it's an honor it's I'm not it's an honor. It was a great honor. That's like being a wonderful thing. The main resident and animal crossing because you have to go around and build everybody's house and pay a bunch of bells for the bridges and stuff. And while meanwhile,

uh, uh, uh, sparrow and and diva and charlie, I'll get to live there and just enjoy their lives. And I'm making the big decisions without, you you know anything to show for it That's right. That's it's just like that You needed you needed a coachy president like I had like Adrian Adrian was she loved all the scheduling She's very Leslie nope but full of scheduling stuff and I just got to like Comfort people and like talk them through the hard times. I was the inspirational leader sure not the organizational leader more A lead from the front go get them y'all come a leader. I was the inspirational leader. Sure. Not the organizational leader. More of a lead from the front, go get them, y'all. Come on, leader.

I was getting your back. I was getting it giving speeches. Got it. So at the time that Simmelvice was practicing, obstetrics was really a shifting field. It was really a newer field in the sense, like as a medicinal specialty, as a medical specialty, not medicinal, medical.

Because it had previously been dominated by midwives, right? That's who delivered babies for the most part. Surgeons were always somewhat affiliated with obstetrics because if problems were encountered, then you needed a surgeon to help solve them. But they weren't there traditionally for a standard uncomplicated delivery. But in this time period, we began to see delivery shift to the hospital slowly and under the care of surgeons who eventually became obstetricians, some of them. And that,

because as you enter the realm of doctors, your care gets taken over by doctors. And eventually, as we would see, midwives were kind of forced out of the, at least in this country, forced out of that equation, unfortunately, because there's certainly a place for everybody in the field of obstetrics, midwives and doctors and nurses and doulas and everyone.

But at the time, it was really kind of a struggle where it was being taken over slowly by the field of obstetrics as a medical specialty and mainly by male physicians, because most physicians were male, and less and less by midwives. Symmovice was one of these early obstetricians and he worked at the first obstetrical clinic at Viana General

Hospital. There was also a second obstetrical clinic. But we don't talk about that. Because otherwise why would there have been a first, I guess. And these patients, or these clinics were basically free. Patients could come. It was a way to encourage, honestly, at the time, these clinics were developed throughout Europe as a way to encourage patients to come there and deliver and provide some way to provide care for the child and the pregnant person because so many people would get into a situation where they were maybe having a child out of wedlock or didn't have the means to support them and it would result in disastrous outcomes for both the pregnant person and the child.

And so these clinics were free and you could come, you could deliver, you could get care and get access to services that way. So the two clinics were run by different groups. The first obstetrical clinic was run by doctors and doctors in training and students. And the second obstetrical clinic was run by midwives and midwives in training and whatnot.

And that was kind of the deal. If you were gonna deliver at one of these clinics, it was all free, but in return, they were still in training. Sure. These were still people who were not practicing necessarily on their own yet. So that was kind of the trade off. Soon after starting there, some of us began to notice a difference between the two clinics.

Specifically, he noticed a difference in the rate of something called purple fever. Purple fever? Sounds bad. Yes. Now, perperal refers to the time period after birth, the postpartum period. Okay. Okay. So a fever that's occurring in people who have just given birth.

It was a common... The babies are in the pregnant person. Okay. ...the person who is just delivered, not in the baby. And this was a common scourge back then. Basically after delivery, because people didn't quite understand what was happening yet, the patient would seem okay for maybe a couple days, and then they would begin to develop very high fevers and chills.

Most of them had a lot of stomach pain, abdominal pain. They could have some vaginal discharge. There were a variety of symptoms. There were different ways it could manifest, but one way or another, it was seen as a really bad sign because many of the patients who developed this complication would die. So it was definitely something that you wanted to avoid. Is it as they understood it at that time? Was this a symptom of something or was it like this is the, I guess they would have in the idea, right? I mean, at this point in history, so a lot of people still were believing

in the measma form of disease. Sure, bad air. Yeah, bad air, somehow causing this. And they still, there were many who still clung to this kind of humoral understanding of medicine that each specific illness had to do with a very individual imbalance within you. So the idea that everyone who develops this same thing

has the same problem, like that the same ideology is responsible, actually was kind of revolutionary, as opposed to the idea that, well, you got sick because of this, this, and this, and it looked like that. You may have looked the same, but actually the reason you got sick was this, this, and this. And it could be anything from like, well, you got very emotional. So obviously you'd develop perperal fever or you were wearing a dirty dress. So you did or you had some

constipation. So you did. I mean, it could like, it was weird how you could see the same sort of end result and come up with well, but there's, yes, exactly, exactly. And this was something that has been, this phenomenon had been observed all the way back to Hippocrates, the idea that after delivery was a vulnerable time period for the patient and that there was some sort of sickness that could follow sometimes that was very bad. It was not called perperal fever, also child bed fever was the other name for it until the 1800s really. And it's interesting because you can see this kind of perfect storm develop.

So we have patients moving into the hospitals and clinics slowly, like out of home births and into medical facilities to give birth. At the same time, we see people being delivered by doctors and students of medicine as opposed to midwives. And at this exact same time, we're beginning to understand the value of autopsy as a tool to be used to understand, not just anatomy, but like pathology and disease process and like what was responsible for this person's death can I now understand it better and treat it and prevent it. All of this was happening around this same period of time which is going to create this

perfect storm that we see. But nobody could accept some of ice was looking. And he began to investigate why does the first clinic have a rate of peripheral fever? Anywhere from 10 to sometimes 18% of patients. So it's a pretty high rate. Where the second clinic had a rate of around 4%, sometimes even lower. So a significant difference between these two clinics.

And this was very well known by patients. So the way that they would admit pregnant people who were about to deliver to the two clinics is they just alternated, right? They'd go one place and then when the ambulance was called, they'd go to the other place back and forth. It was so well known around Vienna, this difference between these two clinics, that patients would beg, please take me to second clinic. Don't take me to first clinic, because they knew about how many more patients died there.

They actually sometimes, if they thought they would be taken to first clinic, that it was, there was nothing they could do, and they were gonna be taken there, they would give birth in the street instead, which was something some of I's noticed, that even these patients who were having these street births tended to fare better on average than the patients at first clinic. So he really wanted to know what is happening, what are the midwives doing that the doctors

aren't, or what are the doctors doing that the midwives aren't, what is happening between these two clinics. So he began to investigate. The first thing he started doing was observing the laboring process and the birthing process between the two facilities. And one obvious difference is that the midwives tended to place the patient on their side when they gave birth at this point, whereas the doctors tended to place the patient on their back. And so he thought, well, maybe we need to switch over at first clinic to only giving birth on our sides.

So he switched it around so that all the doctors and students were delivering patients on their sides. This did not help. This did not change anything. So then he thought, well, because again, we did not understand what caused disease well. He began to think that perhaps this condition was born of fear and that these patients were becoming so afraid that they got a fever and got sick. And the main reason that he thought this fear was manifesting was because that when one would become sick and

die, they would just routinely have a priest walk through the unit, ringing a bell to, you know, say a prayer for the rest of the patients in the unit. And Simmelvice's theory was that the sight of this priest and the sound of that bell ringing would elicit so much fear in all of the other patients because they knew now that someone had died, that they would then also become sick out of fear and develop a proper fever and die. So he had the priest walk a different path and not ring the bell. And that fixed it. And no.

Thanks so much for listening to saw bones. Gotta be careful with bells folks It's what I keep saying you know, it's just like animal crossing you gotta be careful with your bells Right this has nothing to do with animal crossing and also this did not help fair So he did what anybody would do in this situation? He was stymied. He was exhausted. He was upset So he took a vacation. No, okay, good. Jill.

So around March 2nd of 1847, Semmelweis heads off to Venice to clear his head, to admire beautiful works of art. And think about things while I guess drifting down a canal and a gondola. You know, and I, this is the time that we will do ads. And then I think it's so nice. No, I just wanna hang a hat on it because it's so nice that people

so rarely take act breaks in their own biographies. You know what I mean? It's nice that someone has a natural and then he stopped for a while and you can too. Take a break. Take a break, buy something. Don't go to Venice right now or anywhere, but do take a break. Do take a break take a break by something don't go to Venice right now or anywhere But do take a break do take a break in your home and let's go to building yeah, let's go

All right, some of us is all rested up said he's feeling good looking good. How is that relevant? Well, he returned on March 20th. I don't know if the vacation is relevant. I just thought it was kind of a nice moment in the story because he, while he was gone, unfortunately, one of his fellow physicians, a friend, a pathologist named Yaka Koletska had died. And when he came back, he was very upset by this news and he wanted to find out like what exactly happened, you know, this was my dear friend,

what it happened. And so what he found out is that Koletska was doing an autopsy and during the autopsy a student blameted on those students. Having been a medical student everything gets blamed on us. But a student during the autopsy accidentally nicked the professor with a knife. The same knife that he had been using to cut into the cadaver. Sounds fair to blame the student in this one. How you in now, you know, it's for a time of all of the life. It was an accident. You know, I didn't get mad at that one time

when that resident jammed a needle into the side of my finger while we were putting in a chest tube. Yeah. I was not mad at him. No, I was. It was scary. Yeah. But I was not mad.

It was an accident. He apologized So anyway, Kalecka after this happened after he got this cut a couple days later He got very sick and basically He developed a presentation very similar Purple fever to purple fever. Huh. Yes, and when he read this account of exactly what had happened of how he got these fevers and all this inflammation and he developed a meningitis and inflammation of the meninges that cover the brain and spinal cord and he developed a pericarditis of the sac that surrounds the heart. Like all this inflammation all over his body and it was kind of random and

he seemed to be very sick in many different places at once. And he began to, some of us began to put it all together. This is like perperal fever. But why? Because he obviously had not just given birth. So what is it that was connected to? What is the connection between this professor of pathology who has died and all of these patients who have recently given birth who have died.

And he began to theorize, he began to come up with this idea. What if there were some sort of what he called cadaverous particles that were on that knife that cut and then infected his friend and led to his death, that were also making their way into these patients who were giving birth. And how would those cadaverous particles get from the autopsy room to the delivery room. Well, there's a very obvious answer via the doctors and students who were performing the autopsy and performing the deliveries. I was about to say that like just one more time. Well, and it made sense if you consider that at the second clinic, there were no doctors and students.

That's where the midwives did the deliveries and midwives did not do autopsies. Only the doctors and students did. It's not the midwives for washing their hands. It's just that they weren't doing autopsies. No, they weren't doing autopsies. Okay. So his idea, and see, and that's why the idea isn't exactly right, but the... It gets you there. Right... It gets you there.

It gets you there. It gets you there. It gets you to a good idea. So basically these doctors would go perform these autopsies. Like I said, this was a point in history where there were many more of these being done. They would go perform these autopsies and then when they would be called to like, hey, it's time for delivery. A patient's come in.

They would just come straight from the morgue, dirty bloody hands, dirty bloody clothes, because even at this point, like the idea that you would be covered in some sort of like visible gore was not a bad thing. It says you're working, right? Like you want your mechanic to have oil in their hands, because they're getting in there and doing carburetor stuff. That's exactly it. It was a mark of your professional status, of your skill, of this is just what a doctor looks like.

We are bloody and gory and heroic, and this is how we look. And so they would come in that way to do the deliveries. So in order to test this idea, Similvice said, okay, well, if we think there's some sort of particle, then again, if you would push him on it, and when he eventually wrote about this stuff, he was kind of thinking it had something to do with the smell coming from these cadavers particles. So again, we're sort of talking about me as my theory.

This is not a germ that he necessarily understands, but something related to these particles on the hands are making people sick. So if we just wash our hands before we do a delivery, perhaps we could reduce the rate of perperal fever. And soap wasn't enough, he decided chlorine, which was known to be something that could clean things. But it was a solution of chlorine. It wasn't just pure chlorine, chlorine in water. So the solution of chlorine in water,

you had to wash your hands in before you did a delivery. And he just instituted that since he was running the first clinic, he instituted it in all of the clinic and said, okay, everybody start washing your hands. And after he did this, the rate of death from purple fever dropped dramatically. In two months, he reported a zero death rate for a peripheral fever, which was incredible at the time. You know, he was, he, they, they had really made a huge difference. A very obvious clear cut visible difference from these changes. And at this point, he started pushing to, if this, you know, if this was working great with our hands, why don't we start,

maybe we could start cleaning our surgical instruments too. Sure. Why not? Let's find whatever has blood on it. Let's go wild here. Yeah. Cloran's cheap. And words started to spread in France and in London.

He would have, basically, Simmelvice did not like to go do lectures abroad. He didn't really like to do the public speaking thing. He was totally happy with like his students or his colleagues other people that he worked with Going and giving lectures sort of on his behalf and explaining what he did and talking them through the process and why They thought it worked and everything Throughout Europe and some of them some people very quickly started to say like well, this is groundbreaking They would like comparing him to like Edward Jenner like this is groundbreaking. They were comparing him to Edward Jenner. This is going to be one of the greatest discoveries of history, of medical history.

This is amazing. But again, Symmovice wasn't there to speak for himself. And he also, I think it's worth noting, didn't publish. So exactly what he thought was happening and the conclusions he was drawing, it was really left up to the interpretation of the people who were going and speaking on his behalf. Because he did not formally publish any results from this. He just didn't put it to paper. And through, it's almost like a game of telephone.

Yeah. Through people just repeating what they heard he'd done and not having a definitive work to refer to, they began to get some misunderstanding. People had doubts, they had questions, and some of us wasn't there to answer them. There wasn't even a document there to answer them. And so this doubt began to spread.

And I think on sobans, we have shown many times that just because somebody figures out a new truth about something, especially a new scientific truth doesn't mean that everyone else is ready to hear that truth. And this unfortunately is what happened with Simmelvice's groundbreaking handwashing idea is that a lot of doctors and scientists began to push back against it. For one, there was some misunderstanding of it.

By the time it got to the UK, they thought all Similvice was saying, was this seems to be something contagious. And they said, well, we already know that it's something contagious because we'll see multiple patients in the same obstetrical word, get it. Like we already knew that. What is this groundbreaking work? What are you even talking about? We don't even know what he's trying to tell us to do.

Why does he think maybe he should come up here and study for a bit and then he'll see what we're already on to. And then the other thing is that if you did understand it and the implications of it, it made doctors look really bad. Yeah. Well, and not as bad, but like from an optics perspective, but like literally, who wants to accept the truth that they've been responsible for all these deaths over the years?

Unintentionally, but still, I mean, nobody wants to think that that's the case. That's exactly what they said. We don't want to accept that we're responsible for the deaths of all these patients. We were trying to do good. We were trying to learn as we are tasked in doing, learn about humans and save their lives. Also, we're doctors. We're clean. A lot of them took personal offense.

I'm a gentleman. How dare you suggest that I would not be clean right and also all the stuff about looking cool and bloody and and all that stuff so at this point there was a lot of political turmoil in Vienna and by 1849 he actually was let go from his position his contract wasn't renewed so to speak and in part it was probably because of these ideas that he was pushing and his superiors really weren't necessarily buying into. And part, there were just other political things happening.

But one way or another, he returned to his home in Budapest and worked at a hospital there. And when he arrived, again, similarly, the rate of purple fever was very high. There was a lot of death due to that. He employed these same methods at this hospital. And again, saw an amazing reduction in the rate of, you know, child bed fever. However, it was in basically obscurity at this point because nobody was paying attention to him. He had sort of been discredited on, on a large stage.

The doctor who took his position in Vienna, who would kind of be his lifetime, like, enemy, his nemesis, so to speak, Karl Braun. Basically took over in Vienna at the obstetrical clinic and said, all of this is ridiculous. There are no cadaverous particles, there is no similar infection. All of these patients have different things going on and he came up with a different reason for every person who got sick.

But he also continued the chlorine washings. Yeah, just go ahead. Hey, we already bought all this chlorine. Let's just go ahead and yeah, you never know. Which was what it ended up doing is he said everything he thought was wrong and here's what's really right and just believe me, but the mortality rate stayed very low because he was continuing with the washings. So everybody just thought, but people didn't know that part. Right. So they thought, oh, well, some of us was wrong. Bronze are right.

was wrong, bronze or right, right? Eventually, Similvice did publish. But it was so far after all of these conversations had been happening. He published a couple smaller works in 1856 and 1858. And it wasn't until 1861 that he finally published like his master work describing everything that he did and why it worked. And all of his numbers.

Here were the stats before here were the stats after I mean all of this. Probably would have been a lot more impactful if it had been published at the time but by the time he did. It was kind of like everybody had already made their minds up about him. There were a lot more works denouncing him by that point then he could publish to fight back against it. And he spent his last few years becoming increasingly erratic at this point, after 1861, when he published this, and even when he published this, it should be noted that a lot of like, rigorous scientists read it and said, like, well, this is not exactly written like a scientist. Like it seems kind of angry and combative and emotional.

And it's not just purely like, here's what I did in here, the numbers and here are my very, you know, scientific conclusions. It was less academic and a lot more emotional at this point because he was so frustrated from not being believed. And he began to, I have a quote, he began to write these letters to obstetricians who were practicing in different places to try to get them to do what he was doing. It was with this very good benevolent motivation,

but he wrote letters to people with things like you, air professor, have been a partner in this massacre. And he wrote to somebody else, should you, without having disproved my doctrine, continue to train your pupils against it, I declare before God and the world that you are a murderer and the history of childbed fever would not be unjust to you if it memorialized you as a medical neuro. Oh, geez. So he wrote a lot of letters like this.

A little more, maybe perhaps some of us a little more honey instead of the vinegar if we want to catch some flies. Furious letters, he beat his, and like I said, his wife noted that his behavior became very different. He was noted to be out, seen out on the town with other women who were not his wife. He began drinking a lot more. And there's been a lot of debate as to exactly what was going on. Was it just complete overwrought frustration, you know, stress?

I tried to save the world and the world is too stupid to see it and I just can't anymore. Was it some form of dementia? It's been to be able to have been early on, say it would have been like 47. So maybe early on that, but was it some form of dementia? Was it a psychiatric condition? Nobody's really sure what exactly, clearly things started to take a turn at this point in his life. And

as a result, he was actually another physician committed him to a psychiatric facility. And when he, after he arrived there from the mistreatment that he received, he died two weeks later, probably from a bacteria, a blood infection, an infection is blood very similar to the perperal fever that he had been working so hard to eradicate. And the doctor that took over for him in Budapest at that hospital, stopped all the hand washing and the mortality rate from purple fever climbed again.

Which you would have thought would have showed people. But it really, it wasn't until, and we've talked about them on the show before, but Pasteur came along with the germ theory of disease and Lister introduced the idea of antiseptic technique that reinforced all of these principles and basically proved that Semmelvice was right.

He didn't know why he was right, but he was right. And his legacy stands today in the sense that he has a university, hospitals, a museum named after him. There was a coin. There was a stamp, this recent Google doodle, there's a planet, a minor planet named after Semmelvice, there've been plays, there've been books, there've been movies, there've been lots written and said

and celebrated about Semmelvice as an important historical figure. Of course, it is unfortunate that he was not given that due in his time and all the lives that could have been saved. Headed his work been recognized when he first did it, you know, how many people suffered and didn't need to if everybody started washing their hands back then. You know, I'm kind of struggling with this one, is there more to the before I go ahead? I was just going to say there's also something called the semilvice reflex.

And I think it's important, maybe not so much in the context of this exact moment in medical history and everything that's going on. But just for our show, we tend to be very resistant to new ideas, especially new scientific ideas that challenge a deeply held like societal or cultural norm Something that that really pushes against the status quo no matter how much truth evidence Anything no matter how much proof is behind it when it's introduced we tend to immediately discredit discount refuted And that is called the Simulvice Reflex in his honor.

I'm struggling with this one, Sid, because I mean, obviously, I have, I don't have all the facts. I have 35 minutes of history of Simulvice. I don't want to make any broad sweeping judgments, but it seems to me that most of the figures that we talk about

who have had a massive impact and have made big changes. Once they have that breakthrough, they are singularly focused on that. And they are sort of singularly focused on changing minds and spreading the word about that and like letting people know. And there's a part of me that's really struggling with this because I feel like if you make a discovery, like he made you owe it to humanity in a sense

to make that your primary, like spreading the word about that, changing minds with that, like you owe it to the species to like make that your focus, To like document and get the word out and get facts out and publish. And you know, all that stuff you said he held off on doing because he didn't like, you know, that wasn't his thing.

Like, it's hard to say. I mean, it's hard to reach back into history and really understand someone's like character and motivations, why they did or didn't do anything. I would say that you know sometimes People who make these groundbreaking discoveries aren't aren't like naturally suited to be the spokesperson for them. I would say we see that throughout history that just not They're not public speakers. Not everybody likes to speak in public. Not everybody likes to I hate

Right. I hate publishing I hate having to like do case reports and studies and stuff. That's just never been my interest or skill set. It would be, I would hope that I would be able to rise to the occasion where I ever to uncover something. So groundbreaking is this, but it would be, it's not something I seek out. So I mean, that's part of it. But I mean, the other thing is, even if he had done it all, I think that we see all that now, and it's important to understand all that. But even if he had done it all, quote unquote, perfectly, even if he had published it all at that moment, even if he had been an amazing public speaker who had traveled all over Europe

and done all the big talks and presented all of his numbers for everyone to see, even if he had, I don't know if everybody was ready for it. I mean, the implications were really, there were people who did accept his work. It was actually more accepted in Germany. That was one place where they started to believe that long before other places throughout Europe would adopt these principles. And as some professors began to understand what it meant and really like ascribe to that way of looking at things, one in particular even actually died by suicide because they

felt so horrible after they realized what they had been responsible for early in their career. I mean, that's a huge thing. And I think that's part of it that we're not. Part of it is like you don't like to change your idea of I know how things work and it's scary if I didn't. But the other part is how many people have I harmed? Sure.

And not just people like someone who's just given birth. Right, right, right. I mean, that's just such a, it's such a vulnerable raw time to- It's not what you're getting the best for. No. In fact, it's quite the opposite. So I mean, I think it's a it's such a vulnerable Raw time so you know what you get in the biz for no, it's quite the opposite So I mean, I think it's easier to sit back and say well if you've published, you know, maybe but Whatty would we I don't know I'm saying is that we don't like When ideas challenge us like this and hand washing challenged us in a way that

All I'm saying is this if I'm making a simple statement that if I had made this discovery Everyone would have started to wash their hands instantly and I wouldn't have shot about it And I would have fixed I would say a lot of lives. I guess it would have been me. I would have said a lot of life Because you would have done 30 or 40 podcasts about it. I plan it just and Would be out there you'd have Justin on a stamp just not going to be something else So we wash our hands now Thanks to ignorance some of ice and Justin McElroy in a sense Dr. Simmelvice we think about it. We all know to wash our hands. I hope you're all washing your hands a lot 20 seconds

uh Do you have a favorite song to wash your hands to? No, Sydney, but I'd like you to share yours. Yeah, we already talked about mine. It's all star Yes, I still do that one every time is how you do every time every time What's yours? I made up a song for Charlie and Cooper saying your song You do with them all the time you could sing your song Okay My daughters Charlie and Cooper You got to understand Charley and Cooper You gotta understand

Right now more than ever You gotta wash your hands Come on and wash your hands You gotta wash your hands That's about 20 seconds. It's like 22 give or take A couple extra for the law. It's a couple extra to make it work. Thank you so much for listening to our program. We'll be you've enjoyed yourself. Thanks to the taxpayers for these. There's a song.

Medicines is the intro and outro of our program. Hey, you know what? There's a lot of local bookstores that are doing like shipping and stuff. What better? what better time? We need a little free time to call them, see if they can get you a copy of the solvents book. Curl up in the safety of your own home with a good book. That is going to do it for us for this week. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy.

I'm Cindy McRoy. And as always, don't draw a hole in your head! Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artists don't. Audience supported.