Question

Suggest why other doctors were so resistant to Semmelweis' ideas?

Answer 1

They just didn't like it

Explanation:

Ignaz Semmelweis' ideas were extremely odd at the time in the study of biology. For example, if someone came up to you and told you that the cure for cancer can be developed by anyone with simple knowledge (just pretend). You'd tell them they're out of their mind, so many brilliant people have worked on this for so long and now some maniac says something that totally contradicts all those work. This is kinda what happened to Semmelweis.

In conclusion, his idea was widely considered mad and offensive, and most doctors' opinions clashed with his.

Answer 2

Semmelweis did not lead a gratifying life but the fact that we are still discussing him in 2018 means that his existence was not worthless. Some people do not get their due during their life time and he was one of them.

Explanation:

It is difficult to comment on the reasons why contemporaries in Europe resisted Ignaz Semmelweis' idea. He simply asked his fellow doctors to wash their hands in chlorinated lime solution before attending patients in first obstetrical clinic of Vienna General Hospital.

Semmelweis correctly concluded that infection of childbed fever was carried by doctors themselves from morgue (where doctors examined cadavers of patients who died earlier after child birth) to maternity unit. Incidence of the disease was three times higher in wards where doctors helped in delivering babies compared to the ward where only midwives were employed. After he insisted on washing hands in May 1847, mortality rate in the ward sharply declined .

Let us now list down various possible reasons of nonacceptance of his idea by the scientific community of Europe :

1. Semmelweis was not a son of the soil in Vienna, he was an unappreciated Hungarian doctor from Budapest. There was political turmoil in Hungary and Austria was instrumental in crushing Hungarian revolution.

2. Doctors somehow could not accept the fact that they themselves were responsible for death of their patients. He was met with resistance from his own colleagues.

3. Existence of the morbid poison (later found to be a streptococcus) that he thought was causing the disease could not be declared as an infectious 'germ' in that era: Pasteur just started his career after masters and Koch was only a child in 1847.

4. Semmelweis did not publish his findings for almost thirteen years. In 1861 he ultimately published in German language, but by the time he acquired more foes than friends.

5. This was because he often used foul language for his critics and had a very bad temper. His critics on the other hand ridiculed and punished him in most distasteful manner.

6. His erratic behavior ultimately led him to an asylum, where he died within two weeks caused by severe beating by guards.