What's Your Favourite 'Conspiracy Theory'?

As my book manuscript deadline looms next week, time is becoming a wee bit scarce, hence a standing invitation to share your most loony thoughts--plus my favourite such 'theory'

Dear readers,

I’m supposed to consign a book manuscript to the publisher next week, hence, my time is somewhat limited over the next few days. In case you’re wondering what my books is about, I can re-direct you to my ‘other’ Substack (the one with the picture postcards):

From the Vaults of Zwettl Abbey's Archives

A Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

Most readers probably don’t know that the proximate cause of me starting this Substack over three years ago has been to document, to the best of my abilities, the insane Covid policies in Austria.

I’ve written many hundreds of thousands words since, always trying to be as accurate and circumspect as possible; I’ve also endeavoured to bring you information from the fringes (vanguard) of academia, if only to showcase our society’s growing insanity.

Today, I wish to contribute to the latter trope and offer my favourite ‘conspiracy theory’ that, the more one digs into these notions, becomes ever more absurd, like ‘stranger than fiction’.

It has to do with notions of ‘consensus’ among ‘the experts™’ who, back in the day, even committed one ‘heretic’ to a mental institution for dissenting.

I am, of course, talking about Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-65; picture credit), and I’ll let the accepted, definitely moderated, a fact-checked (by ‘trusted flaggers™’) Wikipedia tell his story (references omitted, emphases mine):

Semmelweis…was a Hungarian physician and scientist of German descent who was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures and was described as the ‘saviour of mothers’. Postpartum infection, also known as puerperal fever or childbed fever, consists of any bacterial infection of the reproductive tract following birth and in the 19th century was common and often fatal. Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of infection could be drastically reduced by requiring healthcare workers in obstetrical clinics to disinfect their hands. In 1847, he proposed hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions at Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors’ wards had three times the mortality of midwives’ wards. The maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to less than 2%, and he published a book of his findings, Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, in 1861.

Despite his research, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing [as if the—then thousands, today billions—of lives saved weren’t ‘good enough™’], and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands [‘trust the science™’] and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating.

His findings earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory, giving Semmelweis' observations a theoretical explanation, and Joseph Lister, acting on Pasteur’s research, practised and operated using hygienic methods with great success.

If you’re up for the long-form treatment, I recommend K. Codell Carter & Barbara Carter’s Childbed Fever: A Scientific Biography of Ignaz Semmelweis (London: Routledge, 2017; 1st ed. Greenwood Press, 1994).

For those with less time at their hands, the Wikipedia entry entitled ‘Contemporary reaction to Ignaz Semmelweis’ also contains choice excerpts, as do both such entries in the German language.

Note that the smear campaign continues to this days, and the pettiness of ‘consensus expert opinion™’ may be summarised in this paragraph:

Semmelweis’ misconception of childbed fever

Today [good for us, eh?] it is well known that Semmelweis was wrong about the theory of cadaveric contamination [which isn’t the topic of the paragraph, by the way]. What Semmelweis did not know is that chlorinated lime not only destroys the stench on contaminated hands, but also the bacteria there—the germ theory of disease had yet to be developed. Many of the epidemics of childbed fever were probably caused by streptococcus infections—either type A, which is commonly found in the throat and nasopharynx of otherwise healthy carriers, or type B, which lives on the skin. Type B is also found in the genitals of about 5–30% of pregnant women. It is therefore necessary for the physician to disinfect their hands before every examination and not, as Semmelweis thought, only after visits to the morgue.

So, if you’re feeling a bit down every now and then, please consider Ignaz Semmelweis who stands probably quite alone in the Pantheon of Science as the man who saved most people.

He had no theory to refer to, and despite saving countless lives, he is still bamboozled in the present.

You cannot make this up.

So, what’s your favourite loony conspiracy theory?