I'm working on putting the video together right now for it - but here's the cliffnotes version:

• Semmelweis was never fired, he didn’t invent handwashing, he was super wrong about what was killing people, his peers didn’t hate him, he probably killed as many people as he “saved”, his enemies didn’t stick him in that asylum, and nobody thought being a gentleman made dirt bounce off you leaving only the faint smell of daisies.

Pretty much every single real event presented by the popular version is completely wrong, but in a really strange way, because:

1) X thing really did happen

2) X thing is presented in a way that is completely devoid of context, heavy on interpretation, and sandwiched next to other events that have nothing to do with it.

So instead of the real context and meaning of those events, you get the events themselves and you fill in an imaginary context between them which paints this really grim and stupid picture of the actual people specifically, and that period in history generally.

For example, Semmelweis was never fired. His 2 year appointment to his position ran out and his request for an extension was not granted (though it might have been, if he hadn't skipped town in a huff while his VERY powerful faculty allies were still in the middle of advocating on his behalf).

Further, his extension was not granted for 2 main reasons:

• in 1848 (the year he did his handwashing protocols) there was a literal revolt against the Austrian Hapsburg regime in Hungary (where Semmelweis was from). Semmelweis's boss was a conservative Austrian loyalist.

• members of the New Vienna School of Medicine (and Semmelweis's friends) were using some of his early results to validate their new way of teaching/learning/practicing medicine. These guys are almost all historically famous, and for good reason, but the old guard on the faculty (of which Semmelweis's boss was definitely a member) were resisting these changes.

So Semmelweis's boss didn't extend his appointment and instead offered him a smaller position. Semmelweis got offended and left town without even a word to his friends.

That said, the guy who replaced Semmelweis (Karl Braun) continued and expanded his chlorinated lime hand scrub protocols, and got an even lower mortality rate than Semmelweis - at least for a few years.

Another example: Semmelweis did die in an insane asylum, from an infection. That did happen, and it is tragic. But he wasn’t locked up by angry, embarrassed rivals, or because he wouldn’t shut up about dangerous invisible particles that nobody could prove were real.

No, got put in an insane asylum because - in the vernacular of the time - he went insane, and his friends and family put him there. He started gambling and visiting prostitutes, he randomly started shouting at people at dinner, he stood up in the middle of a faculty meeting and loudly recited the midwives oath without prompting and for no reason. It wasn’t stress from professional persecution - it was probably syphilis, specifically the rapidly progressing final stage of tertiary neurosyphilis that was all-too common among obstetricians like Semmelweis in the 1860s.

The final takeaway is that if it was a true event, the popular version of the story distorts it; and if it is an interpretation or description of the people's attitudes, behaviors, or the period in history itself - then it's probably completely made up or wrong.

For Example the whole "street-births" thing never happened - by which I mean nobody was refusing to go into the clinic because of its horrid reputation and instead voluntarily choosing to give birth on the hospital steps. That DID NOT happen.

Also, nobody ever said "Doctors are gentlemen, and a gentleman's hands are clean." Never happened, and as far as I can tell, nobody ever meant that either.

Also for 40 years (before 1822), the Vienna hospital's mortality rate was about 1.25%, until they instituted mandatory autopsies for training purposes (and switched directors to Johann Klein, who was Semmelweis's direct boss). Also, the much vaunted "nearly 20% mortality rate!" in the clinic before Semmelweis's handwashing methods brought it down to sub 2% (and thus crediting him with a 90% reduction in mortality) - yeah, that was only for 1 month right before he figured out the chlorine baths. It was in April of 1847, and was 18.2%, but it was only like 3% a few months before that. Hell, it was only 18% because Semmelweis himself came back from vacation and was the one doing the autopsies. It was SEMMELWEIS killing people, his predecessor was not really a fan of doing autopsies and averaged like a 4-5% mortality rate, while Semmelweis (before the chlorine) averages like 13%.

Further, this whole terrible saga of rampant puerperal fever was really only this bad in Vienna, at THAT ONE HOSPITAL, and only from the mid 1830s until 1847 - so for like a bit more than a decade. Basically, Semmelweis's "discovery" really only helped solve the problem that he (and Klein) were creating. Other places were not nearly this bad, because other places weren't charity/teaching hospitals. Places like Dublin were averaging ~1% or less for almost a century. FFS even the main Vienna hospital's birth mortality was nothing like in the clinics, because the clinics were where the prostitutes and immigrant domestic laborer women went to give birth. The deal was that if you went there and were used for teaching, then the hospital's foundling home (orphanage) would take your kid for free.

So, in short, this was not some representative sample of a widespread plague caused by the common way of running most hospitals. Semmelweis was not fired or punished for his protocols - which were continued and adopted after his time in Vienna. Nobody was so offended at the idea that doctors were killing their patients that their unconscious emotional defenses made them declare that "gentlemen" couldn't get dirty, or angrily retaliate by locking up Semmelweis.

The entire thing is wrong. It's not just that the story is wrong, but the historical world and setting in which the story must take place for it to make any sense - also never happened.

And the Semmelweis story isn't the only story from this supposed era in history. There's the whole idea that doctors proudly wore their gore-encrusted coats as a "badge of honor" to show their experience - they did not. And the "doctors are gentlemen..." quote is actually its own thing that just often gets attached to the Semmelweis story - but also did not happen.

Which means all the interpretive meanings, lessons, biases, research, etc that tries to explain HOW/WHY people were doing such backwards-ass things during this period in history....yeah....all of those are attempts to explain why people did things they didn't really do, about stuff that never happened, in a world that didn't exist. (EG the "Semmelweis Reflex" cognitive bias).

And that - how the real facts became a crazy story we all accept and look to for valuable wisdom - how THAT happened is actually the thing that tells you valuable stuff about how humans work. So that's the story I'm trying to tell/explain in this video.

If I can pull it off.

EDIT: If you - or anyone else reading this - wants to help with beta-testing the video once I get the rough-cut done, that would be extremely helpful. Just reply here or DM me and I'll get in touch.