In 1818 people lived in a world of dying women, the vast majority of which were completely healthy. The finest hospitals lost one out of six young mothers to the scourge of "childbed fever." That diagnosis was actually bacterial infections of the female reproductive tract following childbirth or miscarriage. A doctor's daily routine in the early 1800s began in the dissecting room where he performed autopsies. From there he made his way to the hospital to examine expectant mothers without ever pausing to wash his hands.

Enter Dr. Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis he began to connect the dots and drew an associate with autopsy examinations with the resultant infection and death in these mothers. He began washing with a chlorine solution, and after eleven years and the delivery of 8,537 babies, he lost only 184 mothers about one in fifty.

Succes! Right? No. 

For years he lectured and debated with his colleagues. He argued, "Puerperal fever is caused by decomposed material, conveyed to a wound. I have shown how it can be prevented. I have proved all that I have said. But while we talk, talk, talk, gentlemen, women are dying. I am not asking anything world shaking. I am asking you only to wash...For God's sake, wash your hands." But no one believed him. Doctors and midwives had been delivering babies for thousands of years without washing, and no outspoken Hungarian was going to change them now!

in 1865 Semmelweis' health began to deteriorate and he died in an asylum at the age of 47, his wash basins discarded, his colleagues laughing in his face, and the death rattle of a thousand women ringing in his ears.

"Wash me!" was the anguished prayer of King David. "Wash!" was the message of John the Baptist. "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me," said the towel-draped Jesus to Peter. Without our being washed clean, we all die from the contamination of sin. For God's sake, wash. 

HERE IS A SHORTER VERSION OF THIS STORY

In 1844 a medical doctor named Ignaz Phillip Semmelweis, who was assistant director at the Vienna Maternity Hospital, suggested to the doctors that the high rate of death of patients and new babies was due to the fact that the doctors attending them were carrying infections from the diseased and dead people whom they had previously touched. Semmelweis ordered doctors to wash their hands with soap and water and rinse them in a strong chemical before examining their patients. He tried to get doctors to wear clean clothes and he battled for clean wards. However, the majority of doctors disagreed with Semmelweis and they deliberately disobeyed his orders. In the late nineteenth century, on the basis of the work by Semmelweis, Joseph Lister began soaking surgery instruments, the operating table, his hands, and the patients with carbolic acid. The results were astonishing. What was previously risky surgery now became routine. However, the majority of doctors criticized his work also. Today we know that Lister and Semmelweis were right; the majority of doctors in their day were wrong. Just because the majority believes one thing does not necessarily mean it is true.