Thread by @DoppelMark

1/
in XVII century then-modern medicine made childbirth a medical procedure, performed at hospital in standardized manner.

this made systematic one of the risks to the mother - death from "puerperal fever", a bacterial infection that thrived in the serially performed procedure.

2/
the form of the procedure & other hospital work, and the risks to the mother were back then broadly accepted by the medical community.

the risk to the mother was very high by today's standards:

3/
a hungarian doctor proposed in 1847 *washing hands* of the practitioners with an early form of antiseptic as practical way of reducing the risks of mortality to below 1%.

this was supported by his subsequent scientific work, and by observation of the results in the hospital.

4/
the medical community rejected the proposal and the findings, describing the doctor's findings and theories as "unscientific".

Virchow, an established authority of the day, lambasted the doctor.

5/
the whole thing reads as obvious to us... and yet the establishment reacted the way it reacted. they wanted to preserve the efficient, mass applied procedure and dreaded any findings the perceived as a "challenge" to it.

6/
the doctor, hounded and rejected as "bad science man", suffered and died prematurely at 47 years of age.

7/
only after Pasteur gave independent confirmation that germs are, in fact, a thing

the medical community turned slowly around and accepted the risk they themselves perpetuated through the procedure, reported for decades but hitherto ignored.

8/
what is the take-away?

be careful with the establishment in the medicine. they see a challenge in anything new that bubbles up. they also tend to believe everything *new* to be wrong until confirmed in triplicate.

correction of typo: in XVIII* century

PS/
correction of typo in the opening tweet:

in XVIII* (18) century then-modern medicine made childbirth a medical procedure, performed at hospital in standardized manner.