That mothers might live  1938 Film

Another video on Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis.  What do you do when you are the only sane man in the room? Or in the entire hospital? Or in the entire world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

Original at Wikepedia

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis^{[Note 1]} (born Semmelweis Ignác Fülöp; 1 July 1818 – 13 August 1865) was a Hungarian physician of German extraction^[2][3][4] now known as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. Described as the “savior of mothers”, Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as “childbed fever”) could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. Puerperal fever was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal, with mortality at 10%–35%. Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital‘s First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors’ wards had three times the mortality of midwives’ wards.^[5] He published a book of his findings in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever.

Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands. Semmelweis’s practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist‘s research, practiced and operated, using hygienic methods, with great success. In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed.

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Semmelweis’ germ theory was introduced when Semmelweis saw a connection between puerperal fever and disinfected hands of the hospital staff.

The common practice of hand washing nowadays was once considered odd during the 19th century. Moreover, the diseases like malaria and typhoid were associated with the contact with water.On the contrary, large number of women died during childbirth due to puerperal sepsis or the childbed fever. Childbed fever was largely caused by the transfer of infection due to the lack of indoor plumbing and hygiene facilities in hospitals. But thanks largely to Philipp Semmelweis who discovered the etiology and prevention of puerperal fever we now understand the importance of handwashing.

Ignaz Semmelweis – The Savior of Mothers

Ignaz Semmelweis introduced handwashing standards after discovering that the occurrence of puerperal fever could be prevented by practicing hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. He believed that microbes causing infection were readily transferred from patients to patients, medical staff to patients and vice versa.

Thus, Semmelweis suggested the use of chlorinated lime solution for handwashing to prevent the infectious disease from spreading. For this successful yet such simple and cost effective method, he is rightfully considered to be the savior of mothers.

His Early Life & Education

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was born on July 1, 1818 in Taban (Budapest) in Hungary. His well-off family was perhaps of German descent and was Jewish. During 1835-1837, he went to Catholic Gymnasium of Buda for his primary education and later finished schooling at the University of Pest. In 1837, he went to Vienna to study law at the University of Vienna but switched to medicine due to personal inclination. He received his master’s (Magister) degree in medicine in 1844 with specialization in midwifery. He learned diagnostic and statistical methods and took surgical training before taking a post as assistant in the Vienna General Hospital.

Semmelweis’ Discovery

During his job at the hospital, Semmelweis closely concerned himself with the study of puerperal fever causing high maternal and neonatal mortality. The Vienna General Hospital operated two maternity clinics – the first clinic and the second clinic for different classes of patients. The treatment was given by the medical students and midwives in the first and the second clinic respectively. He observed that the death rate in the first obstetrical clinic was 13.10%; much higher than the 2.03% death rate in the second clinic. However, there were no explanations for the high contrasting statistics and several mysterious causes were attributed towards the disease.

During a research on the autopsy of his friend who died because of a fatal dissection wound, Semmelweis noticed symptoms similar to those of childbed fever. This observation prompted him to connect cadaveric contamination with puerperal fever. Soon after he declared that medical students carried infectious substances on their hands from dissected cadavers to the laboring mothers. This also provided the logical explanation for a lower death rate in the second clinic, operated by midwives because they were not involved with autopsies or surgery.

Semmelweis and Handwashing

Semmelweis discovered that puerperal sepsis (a type of septicaemia) commonly known as childbed fever in new mothers could be prevented if doctors washed their hands. Based on his analysis, he established a simple but revolutionary prophylaxis system in 1847. He insisted upon the use of chlorinated lime solutions for handwashing by medical students and doctors before they treated obstetrical patients.

The application of his method instantly reduced the cases of fatal puerperal fever from 12.24% to 2.38%, while in some months there were no deaths from childbed fever at all. Besides the hands, he initiated using preventive washing for all instruments making contact with the patients which literally removed puerperal fever from the hospital. This was the beginning of an antiseptic era.

Reaction to Semmelweis’ Discovery

Although hugely successful; Semmelweis’ discovery directly confronted with the beliefs of science and medicine in his time. His colleagues and other medical professionals refused to accept his findings mainly because they did not find it convincing that they could be responsible for spreading infections. The reaction reflected on his job as well when he was declined a reappointment in 1849.

Ignaz Semmelweis was himself reluctant to publish or demonstrate his research and findings publically but some of his students and colleagues wrote letters and delivered lectures explaining his work. But later, he somehow got convinced and during 1850, he delivered a few lectures in Vienna on the Origin of Puerperal Fever. He returned to Budapest in 1851 and joined St. Rochus Hospital remaining there till 1857. His antiseptic methods proved to be fruitful here as well. In 1861, he eventually published a book in German about his significant discovery followed by a series of letters written in reaction to his critics.

His Demise

The continued criticism and lash out finally broke him down. By 1865, he was suffering from depression, forgetfulness and other neural complaints and was eventually committed to an asylum. He only lasted there for two weeks and died on August 13, 1865 at the age of 47.

“When I look back upon the past, I can only dispel the sadness which falls upon me by gazing into that happy future when the infection will be banished . . . The conviction that such a time must inevitably sooner or later arrive will cheer my dying hour.”

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Of particular importance in medical history, puerperal fever was one of those diseases that intrigued and baffled doctors in the nineteenth century. You might even remember the famous painting of the illustrious Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes delivering his famed lecture on the subject to the Boston Medical Society in 1843. Just as Dr. Semmelweiss had predicted, the disease was conquered when obstetricians began washing their hands between deliveries. Puerperal fever was eradicated with cleanliness. Likewise, surgical mortality became acceptable when surgeons began washing their hands and using antiseptic techniques as urged by Dr. Joseph Lister. The scientific tenets of bacteriology and microbiology introduced by Louis Pasteur were finally being applied to obstetrics, medicine and surgery.

The engine behind the drive for hospital reform in the mid-nineteenth century was Florence Nightingale (photo, left). After her tremendously successful humanitarian venture at the Scutari Barrack Hospital during the Crimean War, Nightingale was able to convince the world of the necessity of improving hygiene and sanitation as well as having trained professional nurses tending the sick in the hospital wards. According to medical historian Guy Williams, when she arrived at Scutari “there were plenty of rats, lice and fleas, but there were very few knives, forks, or spoons. Miss Nightingale and her nurses, who were allowed just one pint of water per person per day for washing and drinking and for making tea, [yet]…the ladies’ own personal circumstances were hardly hygienic.”(4) With hard work and determination, she turned the situation around and by the time she returned to England, she had become a national heroine.

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We have seen that Copernicus overthrew the Ptolemaic theory of the universe by proving it to be heliocentric rather than geocentric (see Lecture 6). But Copernicus kept the old astronomy by retaining the system of spheres and epicycles. Copernicus had little understanding of the plurality of worlds or universes or of the free motion of the heavenly bodies in space. It remained for the Italian philosopher, GIORDANO BRUNO (1548-1600), to make the first complete assault on Ptolemaic astronomy and the philosophical assumptions associated with it.

Click here for more about BrunoBruno was born at Nola, near Naples, in southern Italy. At an early age he entered the Dominican order in Naples. Charged with heresy in 1576, Bruno fled the convent and the Dominicans and traveled widely across Europe. His spirit was in rebellion against the more reactionary aspects of Catholicism, while his Catholic antecedents made many Protestants suspicious of him. Therefore, Bruno was not entirely welcome in either camp. This is especially important to recognize since his short life spans the period in which Catholics and Protestants were engaged in heated battle.

However, Bruno was honored by scholars and he taught at many important centers of learning, among them Toulouse, Paris, Oxford and Wittenberg. He made the mistake of returning to Italy (1591), was betrayed by one of his pupils in Venice, and turned over to the Inquisition. At the end of the Venetian trial he recanted his heresies, but was sent to Rome for another trial. Here he remained in prison for eight years, at the end of which he was sentenced as a heretic and, in February 1600, was burned alive on the Campo de’ Fiori, the first conspicuous martyr to the new world view.

Bruno mastered the existing body of mathematics and understood the Copernican system. Although he had at his disposal the necessary preparation for carrying out his an astrophysical revolution, it was conceived within a devout and pious mental climate. In the old astronomy, the earth was regarded as the center of the universe. Copernicus had replaced the earth with the sun as the center of the system. Bruno argued that there can be no such limitation of the physical universe as was implied in the system of crystalline spheres. There is neither limit nor center to the universe. Everything depends on the place of observation. Each observer on the earth may regard his point of observation as the center, but it would no so appear to an observer on the sun or on one of the other planets or the fixed stars.

Everything, then, is relative to the point of observation. Position is relative. Up and down are terms that have precise meaning only when used in regard to a particular spot in the universe. The same applies to motion — it is likewise relative. There is no absolute direction. Time is also relative.

Bruno’s notion of relativity not only upset the old astronomical conceptions, it also challenged a basic notion in Aristotle’s physics. Aristotle (384-322) had suggested that light and heavy are absolute phenomena. Heavy matter seeks the center of the universe. This is the earth, and the earth is the heaviest element. Bruno insisted that this is an error as it assigns false importance to the earth.

Even more revolutionary was Bruno’s hypothesis of a plurality of worlds and universes. Not only may there be other earths like ours — other universes may exist as well. Further, Bruno repudiated the notion that the materials in the heavens are of a higher order than earth, air, fire and water. And it had been assumed that the heavenly bodies are composed of a mysterious fifth element, the “aether.” Bruno believed that other heavenly bodies are presumably made up of the same materials as the earth, a guess which required the spectroscope of the 19th century to prove scientifically valid.

Finally, Bruno broke away from the notion of fixed starry spheres and epicycles. The heavenly bodies move freely in space, he declared, although it required the work of Galileo (1564-1642), Kepler (1571-1630), and Isaac Newton (see Lecture 7) to elucidate the problems associated with their movements and orbits. These ideas Bruno illustrated in three works: On Cause,Principle and Unity; On the Infinite Universe and the Worlds; and On the Immeasurable and Countless Worlds.

Since the medieval world view had revolved about the Christianized Ptolemaic system, embodied in Dante’s Divine Comedy, it is not difficult to see why the faithful might have looked upon Bruno with horror. He challenged geocentrism, refuted the dogma of the perfection of the heavens, and suggested that there might be a vast number of other worlds as well as universes. This last idea was particularly disconcerting. Though Bruno had no such purpose in mind, it directly opposed the creation tale specified in Genesis and constituted a grave challenge to the divinity of Jesus. Bruno’s heresy in the eyes of the Church is perhaps understandable, particularly when he put it in clear and popular language. There was a very real danger that Bruno would stir up widespread skepticism of the Christian world view. Yet Bruno himself was not an agnostic nor did he embrace a mechanistic outlook. He regarded God as at work in a creative and directive capacity in every part of the vast universe of universes which he imagined. In his theology and in his views of God and Nature, Bruno was a pious mystic and ardent Christian.

“ We shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe“

• If perchance there should be foolish speakers who, together with those ignorant of all mathematics, will take it upon themselves to decide concerning these things, and because of some place in the Scriptures wickedly distorted to their purpose, should dare to assail this my work, they are of no importance to me, to such an extent do I despise their judgment as rash. For it is not unknown that Lactantius, the writer celebrated in other ways but very little in mathematics, spoke somewhat childishly of the shape of the earth when he derided those who declared the earth had the shape of a ball. So it ought not to surprise students if such should laugh at us also. Mathematics is written for mathematicians to whom these our labors, if I am not mistaken, will appear to contribute something even to the ecclesiastical state the headship of which your Holiness now occupies.(Author’s preface to de revolutionibus)
  • Translation as quoted in The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe (1917) by Dorothy Stimson, p. 115

• Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if only we face the facts, as they say, “with both eyes open.”
  • As quoted in The Copernican Revolution : Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (1957) by Thomas S. Kuhn

• To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful workings of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance cannot be more grateful than knowledge.
  • As quoted in Poland : The Knight Among Nations (1907) by Louis E. Van Norman, p. 290; also in The Language of God (2006) by Francis Collins, pp. 230-31.

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543)

• Neque enim ita mihi mea placent, ut non perpendam, quid alii de illis iudicaturi sint. Et quamvis sciam, hominis philosophi cogitationes esse remotas à iudicio vulgi, propterea quòd illius studium sit veritatem omnibus in rebus, quatenus id à Deo rationi humanæ permissum est, inquirere, tamen alienas prorsus à rectitudine opiniones fugiendas censeo. Itaque cum mecum ipse cogitarem, quàm absurdum ἀκρόαμα existimaturi essent illi, qui multorum seculorum iudiciis hanc opinionem confirmatam norunt, quòd terra immobilis in medio cœli, tanquam centrum illius posita sit, si ego contra assererem terram moveri…
  • For I am not so enamored of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. I am aware that a philosopher’s ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavor to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned. Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the heaven as its center would, I reflected, regard it as an insane pronouncement if I made the opposite assertion that the earth moves.
  • Preface.

• When, therefore, I had long considered this uncertainty of traditional mathematics, it began to weary me that no more definite explanation of the movement of the world-machine established in our behalf by the best and most systematic builder of all, existed among the philosophers who had studied so exactly in other respects the minutest details in regard to the sphere. Wherefore I took upon myself the task of re-reading the books of all the philosophers which I could obtain, to seek out whether any one had ever conjectured that the motions of the spheres of the universe were other than they supposed who taught mathematics in the schools. And I found first, that, according to Cicero, Nicetas [assumed by modern editors to mean Hicetas] had thought the earth was moved. Then later I discovered, according to Plutarch, that certain others had held the same opinion. … When from this, therefore, I had conceived its possibility, I myself also began to meditate upon the mobility of the earth. And although the opinion seemed absurd, yet because I knew the liberty had been accorded to others before me of imagining whatsoever circles they pleased to explain the phenomena of the stars, I thought I also might readily be allowed to experiment whether, by supposing the earth to have some motion, stronger demonstrations than those of the others could be found as to the revolution of the celestial sphere. Thus, supposing these motions which I attribute to the earth later on in this book, I found at length by much and long observation, that if the motions of the other planets were added to the rotation of the earth and calculated as for the revolution of that planet, not only the phenomena of the others followed from this, but also it so bound together both the order and magnitude of all the planets and the spheres and the heaven itself, that in no single part could one thing be altered without confusion among the other parts and in all the universe. Hence for this reason in the course of this work I have followed this system.
  • Preface Letter to Pope Paul III as quoted by Edwin Arthur Burtt in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)

• Nor do I doubt that skilled and scholarly mathematicians will agree with me if, what philosophy requires from the beginning, they will examine and judge, not casually but deeply, what I have gathered together in this book to prove these things. …Mathematics is written for mathematicians, to whom these my labours, if I am not mistaken, will appear to contribute something. …What… I may have achieved in this, I leave to the decision of your Holiness especially, and to all other learned mathematicians. …If perchance there should be foolish speakers who, together with those ignorant of all mathematics, will take it upon themselves to decide concerning these things, and because of some place in the Scriptures wickedly distorted to their purpose, should dare to assail this my work, they are of no importance to me, to such an extent do I despise their judgment as rash.
  • Preface Letter to Pope Paul III as quoted by Edwin Arthur Burtt in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)

 “What was observed by us in the third place is the nature or matter of the Milky Way itself, which, with the aid of the spyglass, may be observed so well that all the disputes that for so many generations have vexed philosophers are destroyed by visible certainty, and we are liberated from wordy arguments.

“Surely it is a great thing to increase the numerous host of fixed stars previously visible to the unaided vision, adding countless more which have never before been seen, exposing these plainly to the eye in numbers ten times exceeding the old and familiar stars.

“Revealing great, unusual, and remarkable spectacles, opening these to the consideration of every man, and especially of philosophers and astronomers; as observed by Galileo Galilei, Gentleman of Florence, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Padua, with the aid of a spyglass lately invented by him, in the surface of the Moon, in innumerable fixed stars, in nebulae, and above all in four planets swiftly revolving about Jupiter at differing distances and periods, and known to no one before the author recently perceived them and decided they should be named the Medicean Stars.”

NOVA FILM ON GALILEO’S LIFE BASED ON THE BOOK GALILEO’S DAUGHTERS  BY DAVA SOBEL

• There are countless suns and countless earths all rotating round their suns in exactly the same way as the seven planets of our system. We see only the suns because they are the largest bodies and are luminous, but their planets remain invisible to us because they are smaller and non-luminous. The countless worlds in the universe are no worse and no less inhabited than our earth. For it is utterly unreasonable to suppose that those teeming worlds which are as magnificent as our own, perhaps more so, and which enjoy the fructifying rays of a sun just as we do, should be uninhabited and should not bear similar or even more perfect inhabitants than our earth. The unnumbered worlds in the universe are all similar in form and rank and subject to the same forces and the same laws. Impart to us the knowledge of the universality of terrestrial laws throughout all worlds and of the similarity of all substances in the cosmos! Destroy the theories that the earth is the centre of the universe! Crush the supernatural powers said to animate the world, along with the so-called crystalline spheres! Open the door through which we can look out into the limitless, unified firmament composed of similar elements and show us that the other worlds float in an ethereal ocean like our own! Make it plain to us that the motions of all the worlds proceed from inner forces and teach us in the light of such attitudes to go forward with surer tread in the investigation and discovery of nature! Take comfort, the time will come when all men will see as I do.
  • As quoted in The Discovery of Nature (1965), by Albert W. Bettex.

Thoughts on Nicolaus Copernicus, as translated in Agnes Mary Clerke: Copernicus in Italy

He was a man of grave and cultivated mind, of rapid and mature intelligence; inferior to no preceding astronomer, unless in order of succession and time ; a man, who in natural ability was far superior to Ptolemy, Hipparchus, Eudoxus, and all those others who followed in their footsteps. What he was, he became through having liberated himself from certain false axioms of the common and vulgar philosophy — I will not say blindness. Nevertheless, he did not depart far from them ; because, studying mathematics rather than Nature, he failed to penetrate and dig deep enough altogether to cut away the roots of incongruous and vain principles, and thus, removing perfectly all opposing difficulties, free himself and others from so many empty investigations into things obvious and unchangeable. In spite of all this, who can sufficiently praise the magnanimity of this German, who, having little regard to the foolish multitude, stood firm against the torrent of contrary opinion, and, although well-nigh unarmed with living arguments, resuming those rusty and neglected fragments which antiquity had transmitted to him, polished, repaired, and put them together with reasonings more mathematical than philosophical ; and so rendered that cause formerly contemned and contemptible, honourable, estimable, more probable than its rival, and certainly convenient and expeditious for purposes of theory and calculation? Thus this Teuton, although with means insufficient to vanquish, overthrow, and suppress falsehood, as well as resist it, nevertheless resolutely determined in his own mind, and openly confessed this final and necessary conclusion : that it is more possible that this globe should move with regard to the universe, than that the innumerable multitude of bodies, many of which are known to be greater and more magnificent than our earth, should be compelled, in spite of Nature and reason, which, by means of motions evident to the senses, proclaim the contrary, to acknowledge this globe as the centre and base of their revolutions and influences. Who then will be so churlish and discourteous towards the efforts of this man, as to cover with oblivion all he has done, by being ordained of the Gods as an Aurora — which was to precede the rising of this Sun of the true, ancient philosophy, buried during so many centuries in the tenebrous caverns of blind, malignant, froward, envious ignorance; and, taking note only of what he failed to accomplish, rank him amongst the number of the herded multitude, which discourses, guides itself, precipitates to destruction, according to the oral sense of a brutal and ignoble belief, rather than amongst those who, by the use of right reason, have been able to rise up, and resume the true course under the faithful guidance of the eye of divine intelligence.

Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)

De la Causa, Principio e Uno (1584) [Various translations]

• Cause, Principle, and One eternal
  From whom being, life, and movement are suspended,
  And which extends itself in length, breadth, and depth,
  To whatever is in Heaven, on Earth, and Hell;
  With sense, with reason, with mind, I discern,
  That there is no act, measure, nor calculation, which can comprehend That force, that vastness and that number,
  Which exceeds whatever is inferior, middle, and highest;
  Blind error, avaricious time, adverse fortune,
  Deaf envy, vile madness, jealous iniquity,
  Crude heart, perverse spirit, insane audacity,
  Will not be sufficient to obscure the air for me,
  Will not place the veil before my eyes,
  Will never bring it about that I shall not
  Contemplate my beautiful Sun.

There are countless suns and countless earths all rotating round their suns in exactly the same way as the seven planets of our system. We see only the suns because they are the largest bodies and are luminous, but their planets remain invisible to us because they are smaller and non-luminous. The countless worlds in the universe are no worse and no less inhabited than our earth. For it is utterly unreasonable to suppose that those teeming worlds which are as magnificent as our own, perhaps more so, and which enjoy the fructifying rays of a sun just as we do, should be uninhabited and should not bear similar or even more perfect inhabitants than our earth. The unnumbered worlds in the universe are all similar in form and rank and subject to the same forces and the same laws. Impart to us the knowledge of the universality of terrestrial laws throughout all worlds and of the similarity of all substances in the cosmos! Destroy the theories that the earth is the centre of the universe! Crush the supernatural powers said to animate the world, along with the so-called crystalline spheres! Open the door through which we can look out into the limitless, unified firmament composed of similar elements and show us that the other worlds float in an ethereal ocean like our own! Make it plain to us that the motions of all the worlds proceed from inner forces and teach us in the light of such attitudes to go forward with surer tread in the investigation and discovery of nature! Take comfort, the time will come when all men will see as I do.

Originally made by Giuliano Montaldo in 1973, short clips cut and re-arranged with added English subtitles and music to depict Giordano Bruno’s philosophical ideals, his reasoning on infinity and his ultimate end.

De immenso (1591)

De innumerabilibus, immenso et infigurabili, usually referred to as De immenso (1591)

• The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter.