Semmelweis's failure was actually the product of a combination of various factors.
Like Laszlo, he is Hungarian, does not know French and Latin, and is not proficient in Austrian German. This is very disadvantageous in the Austrian medical community, which is dominated by German, French and Latin languages. In addition to lengthy writing time, he also has to face other negative feedback caused by grammatical errors.
Some people even question the author's medical ability because of his poor writing skills. So much so that Semmelweis was very disgusted with publishing his research reports.
Secondly, those obstetricians who think highly of themselves use their status and knowledge as weapons to attack their colleagues wantonly, intentionally or unintentionally forcing others to take sides in order to suppress their opponents.
Unfortunately, Semmelweis used the incident of "not washing hands leading to maternal death" to classify all other obstetricians into the hostile camp. No one wants to be the orphan maker in other people's mouths under this argument.
The long-term struggle alone gave rise to a third reason, which was Dr. Semmelweis's depression and paranoia.
The academic world is often filled with various opinions, and naturally there will be objections if there are approvals. It is better to be questioned than to be ignored. When others ignored the factual data he gave, Semmelweis did not stabilize his mentality or further present research and experimental data. Instead, he lashed out at his critics with a large number of open letters.
His reply was filled with pain, despair and anger, and appeared "extremely controversial and offensive" to those who argued back. 【1】
The subjects include famous European obstetricians, such as: Speight, Scanzoni, Siebold, Marcus, the current director of obstetrics at the Municipal General Hospital, and even his own former obstetrics tutor Klein, as well as "all other obstetricians”.
"You actually agree with the views of a medical traitor?" Marcus couldn't believe his ears. "He even publicly stated that his mentor, and also my mentor, the outstanding Austrian obstetrician Johann Klein, was a murderer! "
"We cannot oppose every point of view just because a person is inherently paranoid."
"ridiculous......"
In Marcus's eyes, even sitting in the same room with Kavi was an insult to his identity, let alone discussing with each other. So as soon as he realized that he was wasting time, he immediately stood up and prepared to leave the dean's office.
"Doctor Marcus, please stay." It was the dean who spoke this time.
Although he played a role in fueling Dr. Semmelweis's resignation, today he is on Carvey's side. From speaking for the young man before, now he has completely looked at the ownership of these two rooms from Kawei's perspective.
"I still hope that you can wait for Mr. Kawei to finish his words before making a decision."
Marcus was surprised by his attitude: "Mr. Dean, he and Semmelweis are in the same group. In their eyes, you and I are both murderers."
"Ok, I know."
"You know and still speak for him?"
"This is not a question of right or wrong." The dean immediately stopped smiling, coughed twice, and explained seriously, "I am not only a doctor, but also a dean. I must consider the overall situation of the entire hospital."
Marcus really didn't understand how a young boy could become a key figure affecting the overall situation, but he knew very well that the dean was indeed a guy who could fall into both directions.
Otherwise, this welfare hospital would have been unable to open long ago.
In fact, for the director, the most important thing is that the hospital can continue to operate, and anything can be discussed as long as it is beneficial to the hospital.
Semmelweis publicly made radical remarks at that time. Not only other doctors could not tolerate him, but even his own tutor could not tolerate him. It caused public outrage, and the dean had no reason to help him even if he wanted to.
But Kawei is different. What he wants is not recognition of opinions, he only wants a laboratory. It doesn't matter whether Marcus agrees or not, as long as he gives him the laboratory.
If you don't give it, then you can only apply pressure.
Laszlo can be considered a good card. The dean does not think that Mr. Laszlo will recover his investment for Kawei, but he is not afraid of ten thousand, just in case. He is not willing to gamble, and there is no need to gamble. Anyway, Marcus is easy to deal with, just draw a few big cakes.
"You need to understand that Kavi is a friend of Mr. Laszlo." The dean pointed out the relationship directly and said without any nonsense, "Mr. Laszlo's 200,000 kronor sponsorship has not arrived yet. When it does, the hospital will expand the maternity ward."
This is a good pie, and at least it can make Marcus smell the fragrance: "Don't Ignatz come to snatch it from me again."
"It doesn't matter. Mr. Laszlo has specially prepared a copy for Ignatz, and he won't compete with you."
"Oh, Ignatz, who is aloof by nature, will also please the capitalists?"
"Perhaps yes at the beginning. If it hadn't saved Mr. Laszlo's life later, the sponsorship he would have received would have only been 50,000 crowns."
"What now?"
"150000."
"You want to fight for a room with me for 150,000 yuan."
"That's Ignatz's, not his."
Marcus couldn't understand the interest relationship. Since the dean promised to expand the maternity ward, he could only agree: "Since you said so, I'm afraid I have no other correct option except agreeing."
After saying that, he was ready to leave.
"Dr. Marcus, don't you want to see the contents of the experiment?"
"Haha, what's so interesting about an experiment that tries to prove that a doctor is a murderer?"
"The teacher may be wrong. I have no interest in proving such illusory conceptual issues." Kawei said, "I am only interested in the fact that the first obstetric ward has such a high mortality rate. If Teacher Marcus can Give a definite reason or reason why I can abandon the experiment."
Marcus would not follow Kavi's nonsense, but he listened to his experimental plan out of curiosity.
Semmelweis initially discovered the common phenomenon of puerperal fever in many hospitals through extensive research and comparison. 【2】
He even once agreed with the theory of demolition and construction of hospital wards [3], but this approach requires a lot of money and is too short-lived, so it is impossible to establish it in a municipal general hospital.
Semmelweis was unable to express his arguments in standard language at first, and could not stand the refutations or even personal attacks of these people, so that he became everyone's enemy when he also used the same method.
In fact, it is not difficult to verify this view. A simple random comparison will do.
In modern times, experiments that even ordinary students can do were just in their infancy at that time, and even many university professors did not have this experimental concept. 【4】
In the end, it was decided to give Kawei ten days. After ten days, if he could not produce convincing results, he would have to return the room.
Marcus agreed to this approach, but still had no interest in the experiment. However, in order to confirm that Kawei did not cheat, he instead sent an assistant over to "help." The position of obstetric assistant is actually higher than that of Kawei, but he has to become a tool in the laboratory.
"Come on, come on, if you want to help, you have to be obedient and wash your hands!" Kawei took a large basin of water and poured a large amount of white powder into it. "After washing, you can start working."
The tool man's name is Savarin, a Serbian who graduated from Belgrade University Medical School with a doctorate. He was dissatisfied with his status as a tool man, but there was nothing he could do about it: "I really didn't expect that I would play the field mouse game with a child who had no medical diploma."
Kawi soaked his hands in bleach-based hand sanitizer and said with a smile: "You can quit now, I can do it by myself."
"Do you think I don't want to?"
Savarin is still resistant to bleaching powder: "Are you sure this liquid is not harmful to the skin? The smell is too pungent."
"I have diluted it." Kawei put his hands into the next basin of clean water. "Please be sure to wash your forearms according to my requirements, and make sure to wash them up to your elbows."
"So complicated."
"Then please come back."
"Forget it..." Looking at the dazzling array of experimental equipment, Savarin still succumbed to his thirst for knowledge.
After cleaning with alkali soap, rinsing with water, sterilizing and immersing, the two finally started the vole experiment.
First, measure the body temperature of all voles, and then inject the internal tissue fluid of the corpses that has been stored for a period of time into the bodies of the voles in the observation group through Ignatz's syringe [5]. The observation group will be infected with this bacteria successively in less than a week, and will experience increased body temperature, anorexia, reduced activity, and finally death. The disease progression is basically the same as that of puerperal fever patients.
The experimental process is not complicated. Kawei stays here for a short time every day, once in the morning, noon and night, for a total of no more than 3 hours. The rest of the time is taken care of by Savarin.
The result shocked Savarin, as did the dean who received his experimental report ten days later: "Is it really caused by an autopsy?"
"Well, because the pathogen was originally brought by those medical students."
Of course the director didn’t believe it, because Semmelweis had proposed this point of view at the time, and was refuted on the spot by Klein, the director of the obstetrics department at the time: “Judging from the monthly mortality rate in the obstetric ward, maternal deaths occur during winter and summer vacations. During the peak period, you said it was medical students who caused puerperal fever, but I really disagree."
Kawei presented Semmelweis's evidence again: "There must be a reason for the data fluctuations."
"Why is this happening?"
"Because the Vienna University School of Medicine has hosted holiday studies since the last century." Kavi expressed his guess. "During the summer and winter vacations, a large number of students from other nearby medical schools will flock to Vienna. The medical school provides anatomy classes, and Our municipal general hospital assumes another half of the internship opportunities.
In addition, there are far fewer doctors in the second ward than in the first ward, and they mainly rely on midwives to deliver babies. "
The intern doctor became the bridge between the corpse and the mother. The dean would definitely not want to admit it, but the experimental samples given by Kawei were very sufficient.
A total of 100 voles were randomly classified. The control group lived well during these ten days, and only 3 died. In the observation group, 82 animals died in these ten days, and 12 of the remaining 18 animals have not returned to normal living habits.
"This is my experimental report, which contains detailed experimental procedures and anatomy reports of 82 dead voles." Kawei said, "In addition, I also have a microscope research report, which fully describes the contents of the body fluids of the corpses." There are a lot of things, and I think the results can give the entire medical community a big surprise."
The dean previously thought that this experiment was just a young man's nonsense, and for Laszlo's investment, it was nothing to give him ten days of use rights.
But now it seems that the development of things is somewhat unexpected. He is also a physician who graduated from medical school. Looking at this experimental report written in standard Latin, he had to believe Kawei's point of view: "What do you want me to do? Help provide a platform to publish the report?"
"That's not necessary, I will publish the report." Kawei said, "I just hope that the hospital doctors can wash their hands."
"This..." the dean put down the report, "it's a bit difficult to tell the truth."
Kawei knew there was resistance: "If this report is published, there will be no way to change it?"
"Why do you think Semmelweis left? Is it because he couldn't learn German? He was an assistant like you at the beginning." The dean sighed without explaining too much, "I advise you to become famous It’s better not to publish this kind of thing before.”
Carvey still underestimated the difficulty of changing everyone's mindset, but fame is only temporary. Now that the experimental results are enough to convince others, he must put these two laboratories under his name forever.
"Two rooms are too many, let's take one. I have to give Marcus an explanation."
Seeing that Kawei wanted to say something else, the dean interrupted: "You have been spending time in these two laboratories recently, and you have done less surgery. Have you ever thought about the situation of Ignatz suddenly missing an assistant? What will it become?”
He did not go for the operation, but he still knew that there were fewer people in the ward and that the operation was not going well: "Well, I have been to the ward and the situation was not good."
"The operation failed again this morning. I heard it was a hemangioma and the blood vessels were not clamped properly." The dean looked at Kawei and said, "I don't understand surgery, nor do I understand the cooperation between the surgical assistant and the surgeon. I just hope you can go back quickly to help him, after all, the time for the cesarean section is coming soon."
In the past ten days, Kawei has been busy with experiments, and Ignatz just gave up his assistant position to Hills, who wanted to go further. However, the results of the seven-stage knife operation were not good. Judging from the results, four cases failed, including three cases of death. Compared with the previous week when Carvey served as an assistant, the record was extremely poor.
The only ones that were successful were two amputation points and one anal fistula. Even Ignaz's originally skilled lithotripsy failed. Even if Kawei was not here before, he had never been like this.
Nora's due date was approaching and she would need surgery at any time, but Ignatz was in such a state that everyone was worried about him and her.
"Go talk to your teacher, he can't listen to what others say."
"He has already contacted me in the morning, and there is a lithotripsy in the afternoon, and I will be on stage." Kawei said with a smile, "And I have convinced him to use a new preoperative preparation method, just like what is written in the report. "
