- I don't know about you,
but these days I'm pretty thankful for hand washing.
But did you know that one of the first people
who tried to bring it to the world
suffered a nervous breakdown
and died in an insane asylum at the age of 47?
His name was Ignaz Semmelweis.
Today we're going to talk about
what it takes to change the world,
and how that change doesn't come for free.
Somebody's got to pay.
Let's get into it.
(soft lo-fi music)
Semmelweis was born the year 1818
in the Kingdom of Hungary.
He was a physician and a scientist.
He worked at a Viennese hospital
that had rates of maternal mortality of up to 18%.
That means 18% of mothers
who were about to deliver a child died.
Women begged not to be admitted,
with some women preferring to give birth in the streets.
It turned out, the first hospital was used
in the service of teaching medical students
who had performed autopsies,
and that's why so many people died
in that first hospital.
In response, a 29 year old Semmelweis instituted
a policy of washing hands with chlorinated lime
between autopsy work and the examination of patients.
The effect was immediate. (intense music)
18.3%.
all the way down to zero in August of that year.
Semmelweis was 29 at the time of this discovery.
Eureka.
It saved lives. (intense music)
But it wasn't Semmelweis who brought it to everyone.
He died before he could make that happen.
In fact, his theory was almost completely rejected.
By late 1848, just a year later,
the students had published in Lancet and elsewhere,
yet people still didn't adopt the hand washing technique.
Many people on the.
The medical community of the 1800s got confused.
They thought Semmelweis was just saying
that this type of fever was contagious,
and that was widely known.
They misunderstood a very specific point,
that organic dead tissue
could be the actual way these diseases were transmitted.
Through this whole time period,
Semmelweis never published on his own.
He never directly addressed these confusions
in the journals himself, it was always the students
and others who spoke on his behalf.
That's lesson number one, speak for yourself.
Don't expect others to speak for you.
Certainly the data can't speak for itself.
you should practice writing and social media.
Get into the habit of being able to communicate
with strangers on the internet.
At these critical moments later in your career
you will have a skill that will help you fundamentally.
Lesson one, learn to communicate for yourself.
(soft music)
Let's put this in perspective.
Imagine being that one person
who dropped the death rate for expecting mothers
from 18% per month to zero.
That's exactly what Semmelweis did,
The Chief Resident, his boss, Johann Klein,
decided to go a different way.
Even though Ignaz Semmelweis had a huge breakthrough,
he couldn't keep his job.
Semmelweis' boss didn't want to keep him around,
and it was all because of politics.
Now, Ignaz Semmelweis did fight a little bit,
but then one day he quit, and he never came back.
He basically ragequit.
(clattering)
(groaning) (shattering)
That's lesson number two, don't ragequit.
And I have to admit that this has
happened to me before in my career, it might happen to you.
Sometimes things get heated,
they don't quite go the way you planned.
Promises might not be honored.
We are aggrieved.
But take a breath, take a moment,
think about the people around you
but when you do, feel the emotions,
but be sure it's the rational part of you doing it.
(soft slow music)
in the medical community disagreed with him,
and because Semmelweis was not yet established,
of what was really going on.
They believed in the Miasma theory,
and that's what everyone believed.
That noxious bad air was the cause.
Hand washing was physical,
so how could it have anything to do with bad airs?
Beyond that, doctors felt their status
as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea
that their hands could be unclean.
That's lesson number three,
the establishment is often absolutely wrong.
It's an act of courage
to continue to say what you know to be right.
You have to have the data,
you have to have the conviction to back it up,
but just because people say things are so
does not make it so.
Now, by 1861, Semmelweis started writing letters
full of bitterness and desperation,
and the upshot of this was,
it seemed to his contemporaries
that he was losing his grip on reality.
That's lesson number four,
no matter how wrong your haters are,
don't stoop to their level.
When they go low, we go high.
How you address things matter.
Nobody will ever deny that this road is long and hard,
but if you resort to the bad or worse arguments
of your adversary, nobody wins, especially not you.
- When they go low, we go high.
(cheering)
- By 1865, he was brought to an asylum
to be mentally committed.
He tried to escape,
and he was forcibly subdued by the guards.
- [Doctor] Right, okay.
- Come on. - All right, buddy.
(grunting) (exciting music)
- [Doctor] Come on.
- Two weeks later he was dead from a wound on his hand,
probably from the struggle,
and it wasn't for another 20 years
that the germ theory of disease
became widely accepted.
Louis Pasteur was able to overcome
the establishment with data
and he engaged in the debate at the right level
so he could change minds.
This is the ultimate lesson,
and the tragic lesson Semmelweis learned the hard way.
The breakthrough is only half of the work.
The other half is spreading it to the rest of the world.
Innovations must be spread and communicated effectively
if you want them to have an impact on the world.
There are so many lessons to be learned.
Here's the five.
One, speak for yourself.
Two, persevere, don't ragequit.
Three, speak the truth when you know you're right.
Number four, when they go low, we go high.
And five, the breakthrough is only half the work.
These days, we call the reflex-like rejection
of new knowledge the Semmelweis reflex.
Anyone who is creating something new
that will push forward humanity
and break the existing status quo
will face incredible pressure.
Great change comes at a great cost.
And we've got to remember this,
it doesn't come for free.
And if we don't handle these breakthroughs properly,
they have the potential to break us.
True change requires perseverance
and a fundamental focus,
but then communicating that breakthrough.
That's the big lesson for today.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you watched all the way to the end,
I really, really appreciate it.
Please click like, leave a comment.
Let me know what kind of things
you want to hear on this channel.
Take care. (water rippling)