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.
4. Read again.
5. 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?!?!
6.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.
en.wikipedia.orgIgnaz SemmelweisOpen ↗
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
