conflict in medicine

In the last two posts, I wrote about Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis who ran into stiff opposition from the medical establishment in the 1850s for asking doctors to wash their hands between dissecting cadavers and assisting women in childbirth even when he presented convincing statistical evidence that the washing routine was reducing mortality of mothers. You […]

In the previous post I wrote about Dr. Ignaz Philip Semmelweis (1818 – 1865) a medical doctor who lost two of his residency positions in hospitals for directing his doctors to wash their hands before assisting women in childbirth. Semmelweis formulated the equivalent of a germ theory of disease, from inferences alone, a full two

This post and the next are derived from the professional and life circumstance of Dr. Ignaz Philip Semmelweis (1818 – 1865).  Semmelweis’ story illustrates several features of both ideological factors in the development of conflict and the complexity of conflict. By ideology I mean a way of believing that takes on a life of its