It has not been uncommon for those in error to mock those adhering to the truth.
We've all had ideas - some good, some not so good. I can't begin to imagine how hair-pullingly frustrating it must be to hatch a brilliant new idea, believe passionately that it's right, then find everyone else ignoring you, or telling you that you're wrong, or even mocking you. Worse still...
www.famousscientists.org
Ignaz Semmelweis Hand Washing Saves Lives
Lived 1818 to 1865
The story of Ignaz Semmelweis is tragic on a number of levels.
Firstly, there are the women who died who shouldn’t have.
In 1847 Semmelweis, who was an obstetrician, (a doctor specializing in childbirth), published evidence that when doctors washed their hands before examining or treating patients, the mortality rate for women in his birthing ward in Vienna, Austria, was greatly reduced.
In his hospital, doctors routinely examined diseased corpses in the mortuary, then attended women in childbirth without first washing their hands. In some months as many as a third of the women in the birthing part of the hospital were dying!
Semmelweis could not explain why hand-washing was effective – he didn’t know about germs – he just saw that it worked and that patients no longer caught fevers and other diseases.
The second tragedy is that although Semmelweis cut death rates in his own hospital, his attempts to spread the word failed. Many people died because hand-washing was not made a routine part of hospital practice.