Quoted message said:Subject: Thank God...Dr. W W. Keen,
From: [email hidden]
Date: 6/17/2004 3:42 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: <[email hidden]>
the eminent Philadelphia surgeon portrayed so poignantly in Jan Drew's
posting of June 7the, under "THE TRUE HISTORY OF DEBUNKING" didn't die
in an insane asylum.
Quote:
***he died in an insane asylum**
And then she SHOUTED:
"ORAC FORGOT THAT PART!!!!
ON PURPOSE OF COURSE)"
Well, not according to The Philadelphia Inquirer's Wednesday Morning
Edition of June 8, 1932, which front page article, complete with picture
of Dr. Keen, reads as follows:
"Dr. William Williams Keen, famous throughout the world in the fields of
surgery and science, and fondly known as "The Father of American
Surgery", died at 11:28 o'clock last night in his home at the Touraine
Apartments, 1520 Spruce Street, at age 95 years.
Gathered about the bedside of the internationally known surgeon, who was
one of two surgeons to perform a secret operation on President Cleveland
in 1893, were members of his family, including four daughters. His end
was a peaceful one, it was said, and the elderly and beloved man died as
though passing into a deep sleep.
It was revealed that for some weeks Dr. Keen had been ailing in health.
His advanced age resulted in complications which resulted in his death
last night."
Thought you should know THE TRUTH!!!!!
Indeed, everyone should know THE TRUTH!!!!!!
1. You are confused.
2. You seem so eager to trash Jan
3. Orac is the one who lied and twisted.
3. Read again.
4. He is making Semmelweis to be a hero, that was AFTER he was treated so badly
and DIED IN AN ASYLUM. CAN YOU HEARD ME SHOUTING?!?!
5.Perhaps you should take Orac to task for telling half truths and twisting.
Orac said:Quoted message said:Funny you should mention Semmelweis. He was the prototype of a clinical
researcher. He demonstrated that handwashing could decrease infection
rates by doing a clinical trial, something that had rarely been done
before then, as the methodology of clinical trials had not yet been
developed. His methodology is the basis for scientific investigations
done over the next 150 years. Indeed, he was criticized BECAUSE of his
science, which went counter to the prevailing beliefs in medicine at the
time. Semmelweis is a hero of science, not of alternative medicine.
Now for the truth!!!
Read carefully.
I wrote:
Notice how Orac skips over the denial and the treatment of this *now* hero.
Typical of the *gang*
See below with my notes added, and keep in mind, THIS IS PROOF OF HOW THE
*GANG* DECEIVES AND TELLS HALF TRUTHS WITH TWISTING.
==
It took ten years of Dr.Semmelweis gathering evidence to prove that handwashing
would prevent terrible misery and death from childbirth.
(God only knows how many more died, while *organized medicine* does it's usual
ignoring and denying)
He published This
reseach on 1861 and distributed the medical text to the major medical societies
throughout Europe.
***It was completed ignored!****
An 1869 conference of the BMA devoted the surgery address to scathing attack on
the anitseptic theory. What presumptuous London surgeon would believe a
***lowly provincial from Scotland***
who was telling him how to improve surgical protocol?
<GASP>
U.S. Senator Paul Douglas related the following story, which was recorded in
the Congressional Record in 1963.I spent part of 1923 with Dr. W.W.
Keen. In the Civil War, he was a surgeon and had seen many men die from
suppuration of wounds after he had operated.He went to Scotland and studied
under Lister. Dr. Keen came back from Scotland.He was referred to as a
****crazy Listerite.***
***He was denied an opportunity to practice in every hospital in
Philadephia****
Finaly there was one open-minded surgeon in the great Pennsylvania
General Hospital. He said "Let's give this young fellow a chance!" So they let
him operate.No one died from infection under Keen. Keen began to chronicle the
results instatistical articles.
***He was threatened with expulsion from the Pennsylvania Medical Society.***
This was in the 1890's. Finally he was accepted as the greatest surgeon in
the US.
***He died in an insane asylum.**
(ORAC FORGOT THAT PART!!!!! ON PURPOSE OF COURSE)
==
Quoted message said:It always fascinates me how people will give Semmelweis as an example
of how hide-bound medicine is and how resistant it is to new ideas,
Translation, we can't get past this one, it is there is history, and today WE
ARE EVEN WORSE. WE KNOW WE ARE GUILTY, BUT LET'S TWISTS THINGS TO DECEIVE.
============================
Had you done further research, you wouldn't have been confused.
You would have also see the EXACT parts Orac left out and how he twisted and
made him out to be a hero. He did NOT mention the establishment drove him
crazy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
Ignaz Semmelweis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (originally Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis) (July 1, 1818 -
August 13, 1865) was the Hungarian physician who demonstrated that puerperal
fever (also known as "childbed fever"😉 was contagious and that its incidence
could be drastically reduced by enforcing appropriate hand-washing behavior by
medical care-givers. He made this discovery in 1847 while head of the Maternity
Department of the Vienna Lying-in Hospital.
Table of contents [showhide]
1 Early history
2 Discovery of the importance of hygiene
3 Rejection by the medical establishment
4 Breakdown and death
5 Related Topics
6 External links
[edit]
Early history
Semmelweis was born on July 1, 1818 in Tabán, an old commercial sector of Buda,
the fifth child of a prosperous shopkeeper of German origin. He received his
elementary education at the Catholic Gymnasium of Buda, then completed his
schooling at the University of Pest from 1835 to 1837. Semmelweis' father
wanted him to become a military advocate in the service of the Austrian
bureaucracy, but when Semmelweis travelled to Vienna in the fall of 1837 to
enroll in its law school he was instead attracted to medicine. Apparently
without parental opposition, he enrolled in the medical school instead.
Semmelweis returned to Pest after his first year and continued his studies at
the local university from 1839-1841. He moved to the Second Vienna Medical
School in 1841, however, displeased by the backward conditions in the school at
Pest. This school combined laboratory and bedside medicine and became one of
the most prominent centers of medicine for the next century. In the last two
years some of his teachers included Karl von Rokitansky, Josef Skoda and
Ferdinand von Hebra. Semmelweis completed his botanically-oriented dissertation
early in 1844 and remained in Vienna after graduation to repeat a two-month
course in practical midwifery. He receiving a Magister degree in the subject.
He also completed some surgical training and spent almost fifteen months
(October 1844 - February 1846) with Skoda learning diagnostic and statistical
methods. Afterward he became assistant in the First Obstetrical Clinic of the
Vienna General Hospital, the university's teaching hospital.
[edit]
Discovery of the importance of hygiene
It was at the Vienna General Hospital that Semmelweis began investigating the
causes of puerperal fever, against the resistance of his superiors who believed
it to be non-preventable. Semmelwise became the titular house officer of the
First Obstetrical Clinic in July 1846, which had a neonatal mortality rate due
to puerperal fever of 13.10%. This was a known fact and many women preferred to
give birth to their children on the street than being brought there. The Second
Obstetrical Clinic had a mortality rate due to puerperal fever of only 2.03%,
however; both were located in the same hospital and used the same techniques,
with the only difference being the individuals who worked there. The first was
the teaching service for medical students, while the second had been selected
in 1839 for the instruction of midwives.
The breakthrough for Semmelweis occurred in 1847 with the death of his friend
Jakob Kolletschka from an infection contracted after his finger was
accidentally punctured with a knife during a postmortem examination.
Kolletschka's own autopsy showed a pathological situation similar to that of
the women who were dying from puerperal fever. Semmelweis immediately proposed
a connection between cadaveric contamination and puerperal fever and made a
detailed study of the mortality statistics of both obstetrical clinics. He
concluded that he and the students carried the infecting particles on their
hands from the autopsy room to the patients they examined in the First
Obstetrical Clinic. The germ theory of disease had not yet been developed at
the time. Thus, Semmelweiss concluded that some unknown "cadaveric material"
caused childbed fever. He instituted a policy of using a solution of
chlorinated lime for washing hands between autopsy work and the examination of
patients and the mortality rate dropped from its then-current level of 12.24%
to 2.38%, comparable to the Second Clinic's.
Rejection by the medical establishment
Despite this dramatic result, Semmelweis refused to communicate his method
officially to the learned circles of Vienna, nor was he eager to explain it on
paper. Ferdinand von Hebra finally wrote two articles in his behalf but
although foreign physicians and the leading members of the Viennese school were
impressed by Semmelweis' apparent discovery the papers failed to generate
widespread support. His observations went against the current scientific
opinion of the time, which blamed diseases (among other quite odd causes) on an
imbalance of the basic "humours" in the body. It was also argued that even if
his findings were correct, washing one's hands each time before treating a
pregnant woman, as Semmelweis advised, would be too much work. Nor were doctors
eager to admit that they had caused so many deaths; indeed, they tended to
claim that their profession was one divinely blessed and thus their hands could
not be dirty.
During 1848 Semmelweis widened the scope of his washing protocol to include all
instruments coming in contact with patients in labor and he statistically
documented success in virtually eliminating puerperal fever from the hospital
ward, leading Skoda to attempt to create an official commission to investigate
the results. The commission proposal was ultimately rejected by the Ministry of
Education due to a political conflict in the university and government
bureaucracies. Semmelweis was an active liberal, but a conservative movement
gained power in 1848 and in 1849 he was fired from his position. Skoda
delivered an address on the subject in the Imperial and Royal Academy of
Sciences in October of 1849, but Semmelweis had neglected to correct his
friends' papers to make known their mistakes in describing his work. Semmelweis
was finally persuaded to present his findings personally in 1850 with some
success. However, Semmelweis abruptly left Vienna later that year to return to
Pest, apparently due to financial difficulties, without notifying even his
closest friends. This hasty decision ruined his chances to overcome the
Viennese sceptics.
In Hungary, Semmelweis took charge of the maternity ward of Pest's St. Rochus
Hospital from 1851 to 1857. His hand- and equipment-washing protocols reduced
the mortality rate from puerperal fever to 0.85% there, and his ideas were soon
accepted throughout Hungary. He married, had five children, and built a large
private practice. He became chair of theoretical and practical midwifery at the
University of Pest in July 1855. Semmelweis turned down an offer in 1857 to
chair obstetrics in Zurich. Vienna remained quite hostile to him, however.
In 1861 Semmelweis finally published his discovery in a book, Die Ätiologie,
der Begriff und die Prophylaxis des Kindbettfiebers. A number of unfavorable
foreign reviews of the book prompted Semmelweis to lash out against his critics
in series of open letters written in 1861-1862, which did little to advance his
ideas. At a conference of German physicians and natural scientists, most of the
speakers rejected his doctrine. One of them was Rudolf Virchow.
The establishment's failure to recognize his findings earlier led to the tragic
and unnecessary death of thousands of young mothers, but he was ultimately
vindicated. This case is sometimes put forward as an example of a situation
where scientific progress was slowed down by the inertia of established
professionals.
Breakdown and death
In July 1865 Semmelweis suffered what appeared to be a nervous breakdown,
though some modern historians believe his symptoms may have indicated the onset
of Alzheimer's disease or senile dementia. After a journey to Vienna imposed by
friends and relatives he was committed to an insane asylum, the
Niederösterreichische Landesirrenanstalt in Wien Döbling, where he died only
two weeks later. Traditionally, he is said to have died the victim of a
generalized blood poisoning similar to that of puerperal fever, which had been
contracted from a surgically infected finger. According to an article in
Journal of Medical Biography, by H. O. Lancaster, however, this is not true:
"Much biographical material has been written on Semmelweis, yet the true story
of his death on 13 August 1865 was not confirmed until 1979, by S. B. Nuland.
After some years of mental deterioration, Semmelweis was committed to a private
asylum in Vienna. There he became violent and was beaten by asylum personnel;
from the injuries received he died within a forthnight. Thus some dramatic
theories have been destroyed, including that he was injured and infected at an
autopsy, which if true would have been a wonderful case of Greek irony."
Only after Dr. Semmelweis's death was the germ theory of disease developed, and
he is now recognized as a pioneer of antiseptic policy and prevention of
nosocomial disease.
Jan
