So I have occasionally read about people who have done remarkable things, and I would like to share their stories. You probably have your own remarkable people whom you would like to share with us. So I'll go first.
Once upon a time a high percentage of women died of puerperal (childbirth) fever while in hospitals. In the mid 1800's, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis became a physician at the main hospital in Vienna and he noticed that women who were attended by doctors during childbirth died 5 times more often than those who were attended by midwives. Ultimately, he came to believe that the doctors themselves were infecting the women and he began to insist that doctors in the wards under his control washed their hands before attending the women. The doctors were Outraged!, but the infection/death rate in his wards dropped dramatically.
Well. That would seem to be the end of the story -- but of course it wasn't. Dr. Semmelweis was drummed out of the practice of medicine by angry doctors who then resumed their practice of attending to women in childbirth without washing their hands and, as Dr. Semmelweis knew, deaths from puerperal fever rose again. The short biographical piece I read ended" "And Dr. Semmelweis went decently mad, stopping people in the streets to harangue them about the dangers of puerperal fever".
Carolina