Reference no: EM132753669
You are feeling pretty proud of yourself, having solved the problem of childbed fever. You even applied for a really great teaching job in Vienna. However, your colleagues and other scientists thought your hand washing policy was ridiculous and dismissed it. They even made fun of you for it. Even after presenting your work on childbed fever (now called pleural sepsis) to the Viennese Medical Society, showing them the evidence, they still didn't accept it and you didn't get the job.
Soon after, another hospital had an outbreak of childbed fever, that you, AGAIN, successfully solved with your hand washing protocols. In 1860, you are 42 years old & finally published all your years of work on the subject of puerperal sepsis but this too, was dismissed and laughed at. Your observations conflicted with the establishment- the scientific and medical opinions of the time and your ideas were too radical for them to accept. You are at your wits end trying to convince people of your valid discovery and you become really outspoken, angry and start to have a nervous breakdown at 47 years old. Your own colleagues put you into a mental institution, where you were beaten by guards that gave you a wound that got infected. The infection spread, and because there are not antibiotics or treatment at the time, you died from that wound- 14 days after the beating. Some people say you died from the same sepsis you studied your entire life. It was years later that your hand washing practice earned widespread acceptance only when other scientists supported your findings. These people were Louis Pasteur, that showed that germs cause disease and Joseph Lister, practiced and used hygienic methods in the hospital, proving it saved lives as well.
-When presented with extremely solid evidence in support of hand washing, why do you think your colleagues still dismissed your idea?
-How else could you have shown others your research findings? How could you have shared your ideas more effectively so that they might have accepted it? (remember, there is no internet, telephones, television - yeesh!)
-Can you think of anything happening in the world now, where there is a movement against an established thought? (does not have to be in the science field- can be anything)