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.
Discussion
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We’ve got tickets for next week!
Medicine is littered with the arrogance of established practice. Attempting to have a counter narrative is difficult as it is easier to get your paper published supporting an established practice because most of the reviewers will be using that same process. Recently look at metal on metal hip replacement,carbon fibre ligaments, gynaecological mesh, or drugs such as Thalidomide or OxyContin- the list goes on. Any review of the pandemic must be performed not by judges or politicians or epidemiologists but by those individuals who followed the real science and you could get no better than those who signed the Great Barrington Declaration,
If science can’t be questioned it’s not science anymore. It’s propaganda. They want to rip on people for taking Ivermectin. I researched and saw the evidence on the internet. Research papers are on the internet for those who wants to see. Top respected world doctors are being under defamation by MSM and vaccine manufacturers. I won’t back down recommeding IVM. You can get yours by visiting https://ivmpharmacy.com
There are other instances of this type of thing happening, the first doctor who suggested that heart attack patients should be up and not have bed rest was apparently greeted by a line up of his colleagues performing a Nazi salute next time he entered the hospital. Some doctors were warning of the dangers of tobacco years before anything was done, people working at the margins quite often come up with the revolutionary ideas but are quite often ridiculed and marginalised, often dying before their ideas achieve mainstream acceptance. This same will happen with the treatments for Covid that governments banned, truth will out eventually.
So Semmelweiss advocated hygiene and got laughed at and ignored… kinda like anti-vaxxers like to laugh at and ignore public health measures?
The evidence was on Semelweiss’s side.
The evidence from the Pfizer trial is on the side of the people called anti-vaxxers by dolts like you.
I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for any sort of apology from the people responsible. And, to be honest, the worldwide catastrophe that was (and is) our response to covid-19 has many, many authors. We can point our fingers at Neill Fergusson and Chris Whitty here in Britain. We can blame The Guardian and The BBC here in Britain. But you could find equivalent guilty parties in just about every country on earth.
I expect the covid-19 hysteria will just end up fading away. I’m already seeing less silly people walking the streets with masks on their faces.
But don’t expect the terror-mongers to go down without a fight. As we’ve already started to see, the mask-maggots are doubling down on their nonsense. Now they pushing N95 or medical-grade respirators for everyday trips to the shops, tacitly admitting the cloth “face coverings” they’ve been pushing for two years were useless.
The problem is that this has wrought more damage to global society than anything in recent history except possibly wartime.
Possibly greater than wartime as it was genuinely global (S. America didnt get massively involved in WWII etc) and I doubt there is a single country on the planet that hasnt been negatively touched by this.
If the hysteria just fades away absolutely nothing has been learned. Not least about to handle a global health ‘crisis’, but also what kind of society is harmful to the human race, what quality of leaders we need to function properly, and whether our civilisation is at some level, fair and just (yes that means punishments and sanctions for those involved).
Unless these lessons are learned and everything from the scientific literacy of the general population, the quality and intellect of our leaders, the ability of the general populace to rise about the level of unthinking automatons, to the imposition of personal responsibility (and consequences) on those who have public influence, is improved immeasurably then our species is truly f**ked.
Wiping ourselves out by nuclear war was the great fear of the 50s and 60s.
The worry now is that its utter stupidity that… Read more »
I’m seeing mask usage fall slowly, week by week (Tory seat, English-Welsh border, average income for UK.) But it infuriates me that despite an alleged ‘end to restrictions’ the four supermarkets I’ve been to still have notices saying that on government advice mask-wearing is ‘expected’ or ‘recommended’, Sainsbury’s and Tesco have full one-way systems. Sod that.
I’ve now received a ‘biosecurity’ letter from the Welsh govt. saying that if I keep any poultry – even as pets – I must house them indoors or net them. This is due to bird flu. Thinking laterally, I expect vitamin D in winter would stop livestock getting flu. They suffer from lack of sunshine just like humans.
They’ve been trying this since about January last year and actually managed to get them mandated in certain locations, eg, Germany.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/01/20/germany-mandates-medical-grade-masks/?sh=5cd7859d2596
The article is also a good reminder how eerily similar the reporting about every new variant happens to be: Basically, the story for the last variant gets repeated with the new name in it.
There was also a Scottish doctor, Alrxander Gordon, who demonstrated in 1795 that puerperal fever- a horrible killer infection affecting new mothers – was carried on the filthy unwashed hands of doctors and midwives, and that an outbreak could be stopped if the medics just washed their hands and their instruments. He, too, was derided.
Breaking News –
My home, the Bailiwick of Guernsey is set to allow the emergency powers granted to ‘The CCA’ – Civil Contingencies Authority – to lapse at 00-00 17th Feb.
This means no requirement to isolate, test, etc etc
But whats the catch?
A world first i believe though!
Is it they will allow the emergency powers to lapse or do they EXPECT the emergency powers to lapse? Will the emergency laws still be in place or will they be repealed.
from the presser:
The CCA will not renew emergency regulations when they expire this month.
• Legally mandated self-isolation for COVID-19 cases and border restrictions, including the requirement to complete a Travel Tracker, ends 17 February 2022.
Johnson declares covid over in last ditch attempt to save himself.
Strange how the severity of Covid ebbs and flows with Johnson’s political fortunes.
Colds vs Cancer, which keeps which in check with some degree of regulatory and at no cost. Naturally I have no scientific evidence to support this thought.
I might pop along to see that. No distancing, no need to prove status unlike some other venues, just a request to mask which we would obviously decline.
The Grauniad showing humility? Nope…
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/04/i-didnt-think-vaccines-would-work-scientists-admit-their-covid-mistakes
They’re all deranged. Particularly enjoyed the one who said that as a scientist he enjoys having his views challenged by facts, then goes on to say how wonderful the ‘doesn’t actually stop you getting or pass on covid’ jab is. The irony.
Funny how history keeps repeating itself but we never learn from it.
https://www.politico.eu/article/digital-euro-bill-due-early-2023/
There you go folks the next stage of the great reset, central banks introducing a digital currency, you have your digital I.D. now as a result of the failed injection, now you get your own digital currency bank account controlled centrally, so that the great and the good can tell you how, when and what to spend it on. Thats if they dont take it away from you.
You will own nothing and be happy.
Because Klaus schwab and Bill Gates has told you so
I used to hope that the rule of thumb that ‘science progresses, one funeral at a time’ but it seems that it takes much longer and requires a forceful character of popular disquiet to push change.
It is noteworthy that in the case of modern (ha ha) cancer treatment aka ‘slash, burn, and poison’ the establishment is still holding out against the evidence of Warburg that the root cause is mitochondrial damage and not the resulting downstream effects of cellular ‘malfunction’. Cynically this is par for the course for an industry that knows there is no financial future in curing cancer, but plenty of moolah in a stream of ineffective hope-boosting patent protected drugs each designed to ‘treat’ a specific set of symptoms resulting from mitochondrial damage in particular cells. [See e.g. Thomas Seyfried]
Nixon had a ‘war on cancer’ in about 1970, I think. 50 more years of the medical-industrial complex gave us Vioxx (killed >100,000) and other disasters.
A healthy diet and lifestyle should greatly reduce the risk of developing it.
Nixon’s ‘war on cancer’ was followed by an increase in the percent dying from cancer. Er, the war was lost. I now expect the same if people believe the medical establishment and follow NHS advice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_effect_(oncology)
just avoid fructose. if you can, as fructose production is heavily subsidised for some reason….
It’s like they want ill people.
In a word, no.
The motto of this story seems to be, do not offend your benefactors and let’s face it, its covid to a T
The media told us that we wanted lockdowns, most people went along with it thinking they were doing the right thing and complying The media are still telling us what we want, DM Britain wants Camilla as Queen. Agenda politics manipulated by the msm
We have to acknowledge that some who were drawn to lockdowns simply like control. Many had zero interest in data, efficacy or other relevant factors. They used the language of epidemiology and science to satisfy their lust for control. Better data demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the strategy are irrelevant.
This is analogous to the climate fanatics whose deep desire is to punish us for our energy use. Some of them salivate at the prospect of power cuts and rationing. Presenting them with data questioning the potential effects of policies they endorse to satisfy an inner void is pointless.
Lockdowns are wrong because they infringe upon our rights. That’s what rights are, things to which we are entitled to regardless of events. They are not permissions. It is this point we must emphasize. Even if lockdowns could be shown to help they need to be illegal. Simple as that.
Agreed. You cannot put a price on your freedom.
I’m currently in an online argument on this subject that I wish I’d never got involved in. Lockdown fanatics are really fixed on the idea that China, Australia and NZ are examples of lockdown success stories; as one said to me this morning:
Why don’t you compare the number of deaths per capita between the states and countries you listed and China, Australia, and New Zealand. Let me know what you discover. You do understand numbers, right?
They won’t look at the absence of correlation between US states and their stringency measures (generally hand-waving about population density and when the virus arrived) and Sweden doesn’t count because apparently according to Google data they were in a (non-enforced) lockdown. You can’t win. The same people no doubt believe that however bad they got Covid after they’d been ‘vaccinated’, it would have been much worse had they not been. Again, you end up arguing about hypotheticals.
If the intention was to create irreconcilable division amongst society, our tormentors have played a masterstroke.
The reason these arguments fail is because the lockdown advocates you are arguing with find hard restrictions satisfy their own need for control. Deep down many of them fear freedom and all the responsibility it implies.
Hence the endless discussions of death numbers etc. The concept of inviolable rights is lost on them. They don’t care. Taken to extremes they find it maddening people don’t want rules to follow. It triggers them.
I’m sure you know all this.
I hate internet arguments, because people. I try to just drop my truth bombs and not look back to see the frenzied reactions. Except sometimes. So, yeah, people and their rhetoric. So take this knob you’re playing with ‘Let me know what you discover, you do understand numbers right?’. The dripping sarcasm. The oozing smartypantsism. The patronising twirl with the smug idiot grin. Where was I. Oh yes, the numbers, run the numbers. Because deaths per capita are all that matters. Twirl. Like people’s lives destroyed. Flashes clever-dick smile. Like the sheer crushing effect of loneliness and lockdown and madness and eating disorders and selfharm and suicide and people pulling their own teeth out with pliers. None of that matters. Does a little dance of self-satisfaction. And that’s why Carole Baskin’s a f***ing b****. Do I have the math right there? Or am I off by an order of magnitude? So you take the average IQ of an Australian, divide it by the number of boosters, and multiply by the number of times you heard her say ‘The Science’. Now get online and blast a denier with that. You do understand numbers right?
Yes more fool me. I should have remembered, people!
TBH, when I see people make a comment like “you do understand numbers, right”, I always think it’s a shill. The condescension puts it in the ‘person paid to argue’ camp. Make people who are at risk of waking up, doubt themselves and their own intellect.
Ask if they understand these New Zealand numbers:
53 corona deaths – indeed, very good
133 vaxx deaths – not so good – unless, of course, the most important thing is not whether someone needlessly died, just as long as it was not from corona
The vaxx death data is from NZ safety report 39 which only reports to 31 December 2021 – I can only assume the vaxx deaths have increased for them not to have provided an update by now.
Ahh, but what would the corona deaths have been if there hadn’t been a vaxx programme? Etc. etc. etc 😵💫😵💫😵💫
But thanks, I’ll use that!
“Why don’t you compare the number of deaths per capita between the states and countries you listed and China, Australia, and New Zealand. Let me know what you discover. You do understand numbers, right?”
That’s the logical fallacy of begging the question, they assume that lockdown worked, rather than proving it worked.
May a God save us from the really talentless amateur sophists! 🙂
A sensible reply to that could be: If you want to make an argument based on these numbers, please feel free do to so. Your snide remarks about me are an irrelvant distrcation which suggests that you can’t make said argument.
As much as we can point at Sweden (and I prefer the example of Florida), lockdown zealots can always rely on the fact that specifically for Britain it is impossible to prove the counter-factual.
The predictions of SAGE modelers have been tested twice in England – July 2021 and Dec 2021 – and have been completely wrong on both occasions.
Those advocating Lockdowns wee working to a WEF/CCP Agenda- they were not simply ‘wrong’ they were criminally wrong.
How can anyone still be in any doubt about it?
We still have a long way to go before the scales fall from ye eyes of so many – if they ever do..
Easy, I grasp the power of ideas and reject mindlessness, of which conspiracy theories are a part.
Nineteenth and twentieth century medicine was full of fun facts, from amazing ostrich acts to the spread of the term “doctor” to mean something akin to “ordained one”, from the foundation of the GMC in 1858 to the torture of the suffragettes and the evil inhuman sneers against them in the Lancet in the following century.
Fun question: which organisation did the BMA (by far the most powerful trade union in Britain) buy its headquarters from?
“Will Lockdown Advocates Ever Accept They Were Wrong?”
If Prof Desmet is correct, they probably won’t, because lockdowns and all of the pandemic response theatre brought some meaning, social bonds, and group identity to many previously dull, meaningless lives and acted as a hook for all of their previously free-floating anxiety.
Admitting that all of it was unnecessary and that they will never return to those (for them) heady days of being locked up at home for their safety and security – with working class people delivering everything they needed – will be a kind of psychological death for them. Extremely painful and therefore to be avoided at all costs.
I upset my friend early on in the debacle by saying that for many people this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to them.
At 8pm each Thursday they will stand on their doorsteps and shout in unison ‘Not me guv’
NHS Still Demanding Staff Get Pricked
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPRXmZoO9uk
Alex Belfield – THE VOICE OF REASON
Let’s keep getting the message out
Thursday 10th February 5pm
Silent lighted walk behind one simple sign
“No More Lockdown & Covid Rules Are Barking”
Bring torches, candles and other lights
meet outside Town Hall, between Rose Inn & Costa
Wokingham RG40 1AP
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Firstly, Mark Rylance is a boring and highly overrated actor. Secondly, in the near future lockdown advocates will say there were never lockdown advocates and that will be the mainstream understanding, anyone pointing their advocasy out will be labeled right wing conspiracy theorist.
Do you mean ‘right wing racist mysogynistic conspiracy theorists’?
I don’t remember ever encountering Rylance before his part as Cromwell in the Wolf Hall TV adaptation. I found him compelling in that part.
Imagine my dismay when I discovered that (like most other luvvies) he thinks that I’m insane or deluded and should never have been given a vote in the EU referendum.
Happily, I’m prepared to ignore his politics and judge him solely on his acting.
Disappointingly for him(?) I won’t be going to see his incarnation of the good doctor Semmelweiss, since I’m avoiding vaccinated crowds until further notice.
I agree. He has one character with no expression. Wheels it out in every movie. So now he’s lecturing us about medical theory with some boring play. Here’s my question: is he vaccinated? I have no idea, but I bet he is, right? So what’s the message? Take the death jab to hear Mark Rylance lecture me about the shocking history of western medicine? Err no thanks.
The real problem was, that it was the doctors fault and, on top of that, that their error was pretty simple and stupid.
Many if not most doctors see themselves as Gods and as such as being infallible.
And the only thing they’d defend even more aggressively than themselves is their whole profession, so the odds were stacked very much against Semmelweiss and, above all, the babies.
The similarities to today are indeed striking, in particular the witchhunt against dissenting MDs by the doctors associations is a new modern times low for that profession.
The God complex in medics reflects how they perceive the general public, not each other.
I’d say that this is a general principle in science — while it is nice to think that science is a mature subject which progresses at an even pace, the reality is that it goes in fits and spurts, with each the majority suppressing new theories until the supporting evidence becomes overwhelming and the prior theory becomes redundant over a very short time period.
Possibly because it’s only possible to show something is wrong, but not right.
That’s certainly a big part of it but I think a lot of doctors have become complacent and forgotten what their actual role is – to heal sick patients – and have become little more than pushers of Big Pharma products and inmates of a bureaucratic prison.
What was striking about Dr Peter McCullough’s lectures on early treatment was that he behaved like an old-fashioned doctor and, faced with a novel virus, rather than sit and wait for a “vaccine” or some kind of miracle cure, or advice from the NIH, he and his colleagues set about treating the symptoms with existing proven medicines. Respiratory symptoms? Use existing respiratory medicines. Blood clotting? Use blood thinners. Immune system issues? – boost the immune system via supplements. Inflammation? – existing steroid treatments.
And started getting results. Over time they refined their approach based on what worked and what didn’t, and ended up with their early treatment regime (attached).
It sounded revolutionary in comparison to what was going on in most countries and in most hospitals but it just seems like common sense old-fashioned medicine. And if this approach had been used everywhere many lives would have been saved, or prolonged.
Most… Read more »
Buy and take over-the-counter painkillers and wait until it’s over is the universal NHS method of dealing with not directly life-threatening condition.
Were the resigners (dunno) of Downing Street required to sign non disclosure agreements in return for wheelbarrows full of taxpayers cash?
I met the director of I.T. of The White House, many years ago.
He mentioned that on his day of recruitment, he had to simply sign a blank piece of paper as part of the standard employment package.
Should ‘something’ later come up, anything, but probably a letter of resignation any date/time/reason could be appended, to avoid a crisis.
I’ve no idea if No.10 is similarly prepared.
Plenty of people remain socialists even after socialism’s rather public 1989 collapse. I suspect many of the same people are still lockdowners, and for the same reasons.
Yes, it satisfies a deep need. Or, rather, it helps them cope with a cluster of fears about the chaos of life. Classic displacement. If I control the world I’ll be safe.
I think it’s narcissistic personality disorder often the people least able to run their own lives have a desire to run others.