In the mid 1800s, 1 in 10 women died from childbed fever in a certain section attended by doctors in the Vienna General Hospital. After isolating certain variables, Ignaz Semmelweis made a daring hypothesis that the doctors who did not sanitize their hands after working with cadavers were actually contributing to the extremely high mortality rate in women giving birth. What was the impact of washing hands? The mortality rate lowered 90%, to 1 in 100! Unfortunately, the doctors were actually offended and mocked Semmelweis’s findings…until Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory only a couple years after Semmelweis’s death.
“For when people get caught up with that which is right and therefore willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.