We’re publishing our first ever review of a play today – Dr. Semmelweiss, which was devised by, and stars, Mark Rylance. It’s about a 19th century doctor who made a life-saving medical discovery but was disbelieved by the medical establishment because they were too attached to their wrongheaded theories. Quite relevant to where we find ourselves today, in other words. The review is by Edward Chancellor, a financial journalist and the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation. Here are the first four paragraphs:
The actor Mark Rylance is currently performing in the title role of an interesting new play at the Bristol Old Vic. Based on an original idea of Rylance’s and scripted by Stephen Brown, Dr. Semmelweiss relates the true story of a physician who, while working at the Vienna General Hospital in the mid-19th century, discovered a simple procedure that dramatically reduced the death rate for patients in his care.
Semmelweiss observed that maternity wards overseen by doctors experienced many more deaths than those attended only by midwives. He attributed the difference to the fact that medics went straight from performing autopsies on dead women to delivering babies, whereas midwives were kept out of the dissecting chamber. Semmelweiss concluded that the doctors must be infecting their patients with what he called “cadaveric particles”, and recommended that they wash their hands in chlorinated water before entering the wards. After this recommendation was put into practice, the death rate from childbed fever (puerperal sepsis) collapsed.
Despite Semmelweiss’ brilliant discovery, the Viennese medical establishment refused to accept his ideas and the wretched doctor, driven mad by his failure to prevent unnecessary deaths, ends up in a lunatic asylum. His failure owes something to his personality: in the play he is portrayed as excitable, self-absorbed, intolerant, sanctimonious and, at times, cruel in his obsessive desire to get his ideas accepted. As a result, he alienates both sympathetic colleagues and a lady grandee from Court who wanted to help. Visionaries are often difficult characters.
But the greatest obstacle turned out to be Semmelweiss’ superior, Dr. Johann Klein. Klein had his own pet theory as to the cause of childbirth deaths: he believed that the sickness was airbone and advocated more fresh air in the wards. Besides, Klein feared that Semmelweiss’ notions contradicted the findings of a recent Imperial Commission and he didn’t want to offend the hospital’s benefactors. Even though Semmelweiss’ experiments proved he was wrong, Klein refused to heed the evidence.
Worth reading in full.
You can buy tickets to Dr. Semmelweiss here.
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You can’t talk about compassion as if it is a an extension of ethical thinking or rationality. As they say, one death is a tragedy, a millions deaths a statistic. Does that mean that your compassion is a million times wrong to care more about a single person than a number. No it doesn’t it is the way we are made. I can conceive of caring more about my cat getting run over than I care about the fate of nations and I do not see this as a failing.
Dr David McGrogan is not just a terrific writer on legal matters but a very engaging and readable writer full stop.
Thank you very much.
Very interesting article. My view is that if you have broken the law then you are an ‘outlaw’ and you have given up your right to be protected by the state and the judiciary until you have served you punishment. Why no-one seems to care for the human rights of the victims to live, while the murderer gets full protection for ‘their rights’, I don’t get. You gave up ‘your rights’ when you chose to deprive someone else of theirs.
Well Captain Obvious needs to make an observation that sticks out as sheer contradiction here. In Canada, why is it that you can commit the most heinous of crimes, as described above, the death penalty is illegal yet euthanasia legal? In fact, euthanasia and assisted dying can be obtained if you’re depressed or if you’ve been unlucky enough to have incurred nasty and debilitating injuries due to a certain ”safe and effective” injection being forced on you by your psychopathic government. And it’s not just Canada, it’s the same here in the Netherlands and many other countries. Another contradiction worth mentioning is that in some U.S states the death penalty is legal but euthanasia is illegal. So these laws seem totally paradoxical to me. So somebody kills somebody in the most horrific way but they’re automatically afforded the human rights that they themselves have just deprived their victim of? WTAF?? So what is ‘ethical’ for one is deemed ‘unethical’ for the sadistic dangerous maniac? Make it make sense!
I won’t go off on one about migrants so I’ll just finish on a lighthearted note. I couldn’t resist because of the song ( this’d be a ‘hate crime’ in Clown World, Scotland );
https://twitter.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1775575164287115674
So, according to Kundera, it’s only art when it celebrates shit and otherwise, it’s just Kitsch? This certainly marks him as 20th century modernist who superciliously disregards a few thousand years of the cultural history of mankind and rather, celebrates (his own) shit instead. Or sharks in formaldehyde and stuff like that. One could argue that this also just addresses a metaphysical anxiety, namely, the metaphysical anxiety of semi-educated middle class types who do not want to be told that something more important and more elaborate than their digestive problems and sexual desires can exist on this planet.
https://frontline.news/post/un-and-bill-gates-behind-digital-public-infrastructure
Billy is planning on Digital ID within five years. Bliar is going to be busy.
The Liberal Progressive mindset is to “rehabilitate” criminals. They think punishment is a dirty word. They even get squeamish using the word “criminal”. There is also this idea that the blame for the criminal’s behaviour should go to society at large. His mother may have been a drug addict, or his father may have left when he was three. He may have lived in poverty, been uneducated etc etc etc. So in other words the person is committing crimes and it is everyone else’s fault except his. ——This kind of world view comes under what the Liberal Progressive calls “Social Justice”. ——I say there is only one true justice—“Equal Justice” FOR ALL.
That’s not a particularly “liberal progessive” mindset as this was already the guiding principle behind the German institution called Zuchthaus or the English equivalent house of correction which were both supposed to better people via forced, practical education. The same goes for the idea that people generally don’t become criminals because they’re evil but because circumstances outside of their control forced them to. That was already well-established theory in the 19th century. Christianity may also have played a role here because of its basic tenets than man is inherently sinful, that all dealings among humans should be guided by love and that God is the judge of man and not man.
It may well have been policy in places in years gone by, but that is the current mindset, of the left, who I refer to as Liberal Progressives, who don’t see the criminal as someone who should be kept away from the law abiding public and should be returned back into society as soon as possible. Previous Societies may well have had the view that punishment is not the purpose of incarceration. That is not my view. I prefer the tough love or as that old Victorian saying used to point out “Spare the rod and spoil the child”. ——–From what I can see the softly softly leftists social engineering approach is failing.
Historically, the purpose of incarceration was indeed not punishment but to better people whose lifestlye was considered socially unacceptable by forcibly educating them in the proper ways. That was mostly put them under military-style discipline and force them to do useful work, preferably, physically taxing useful work. That’s consistent with the “Spare the rod and spoil the child” statement: The purpose of the rod is not to harm the child for the sake of doing so but to help with teaching it.
That’s still the goal so-called “liberal progessives” claim to have. They just claim that this can and should be accomplished solely by talking to people (whether or not this is actually being done I don’t know).
Why then is Julian Assange not able to avoid extradition to the US? Why is the ‘torture’ of dragging out the legal process, along with his incarceration in Belmore, allowed to continue? Our government’s treatment of him is pure hypocrisy and double standards.
Tangentially related, another cracker from Ann Coulter: Does The New York Times Actually Care About Mass Shootings? – Ann Coulter
Interesting read. But it sort-of misses the point. Poor and relatively uneducated black people killing other poor and relatively uneducated black people is not a topic for the Times. They’re always doing that and the solution is to ensure they cannot buy guns. Or knifes. Or wooden laths. Or anything else which could conceivably be used to hurt other people. And as evil white conservatives won’t allow us (the Times people) to outlaw all this, it’s clearly their fault.
The kind of mass shooting the Times is interested in isn’t unavoidable Bad weather again!
events like this but societal breakdown stories, ie, mass shooting which are, according to the world view of the Times, not supposed to happen. Namely “privileged, educated white guy”, assumed to be privileged because he’s white, committing extended suicide by taking it out on his tormentors (more or less well-defined). As virtuous society is perfectly perfect, this must not happen. Hence, evil forces are to blame like “whiteness”, “far rightness”, “toxic masculinity” etc etc, basically anything which enables the Times to conclude that the Times society is perfectly perfect despite glaring evidence of the contrary. Like a neverending trickle of (relatively) young white men driven mad by it who then commit mass homicides culminating in suicide.
That’s obviously a hypocrtitical and rather shallow worldview but such aren’t unheard of among humans.
Yes those are all good points.
It’s the typical Liberal naivety, if one smiles enough at murderers et al they’ll stop doing it. It’s also a luxury belief system, as the author points out, as generally speaking the “elite” are not the ones likely to face the result of their “benevolence”.
Another example is today’s news:
Fury as judges are handed a soft sentence checklist: ‘Bad education, drug addiction and growing up poor’ should all now be considered ‘mitigating’ factors when handing down punishment to criminals | Daily Mail Online
This “checklist” been issued by the Unelected Sentencing Council, of which only one is an experienced British police officer, a Chief Constable. Even though he is labelled a “non-judicial member”, that label is strangely missing from the Global Majority Heritage female ex-probation officer member who also, inexplicably, works for several other countries simultaneously on “diversity issues”.
All the other members are in the legal profession, whose main career goal worldwide seems to be thwarting the police at every turn, blocking justice for victims, and lavishing affection upon criminals.
Defence lawyers are a disreputable breed. One has to have a very weak moral compass and a strong stomach to be a defence lawyer.
The sentence I enjoyed most in this article informed us that the demonic Ng’s equally demonic accomplice committed suicide by taking cyanide. I call that an excellent result and the subhuman Ng should have been offered the same method of ridding the world of his abhorrent self.
Failing that, he should have been executed as quickly as possible to prevent any chance of escape. (remember that Ted Bundy escaped from custody and murdered at least two more women).
WHY anyone of sound mind should concern themselves for a minute with the ‘rights’ of torturer/killers who may look human, but clearly are not, is beyond all understanding. Defence lawyers have a very low moral threshold it seems.
Whether Ng was a immigrant or not is irrelevant.