he medical oddballs today who feel shunned by mainstream practitioners can take comfort, for better or worse, in a new mini-series on medical history that makes heroes of fanatical scientists of yesteryear. To say the least, they lacked tact.
Imagine the reaction to Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, a surly Hungarian, who called his colleagues murderers because they refused to wash their hands between autopsies and delivering babies. He was onto something (hygiene) but lacked people skills. Dr. Semmelweis died in a mental hospital, but hand-washing eventually caught on.
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Then there was Andreas Vesalius, the 16th-century Belgian considered the father of anatomy, who stole corpses from graves in Paris to prove that his teachers were all wrong about the body. He was right, but it did not go over well.
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a 17th-century Dutchman who made drapes and worked part time as a janitor, had the gall to write a letter to the Royal Society in London claiming he had made a device enabling him to see tiny animals squirming in his semen. That got him a lot of laughs. Leeuwenhoek made one of the earliest microscopes.
The story of these men and others of their ilk is the theme of a four-part series, "Mavericks, Miracles and Medicine," starting tonight on the History Channel. Each segment traces a state-of-the-art medical technology, like liver transplants or minimally invasive heart surgery, all the way back to the tales of the maverick scientists who made it all possible.
The tone is a bit hero-worship, but if the mission is to reach out to viewers who may have channel-surfed past the station, the show might interest the otherwise disinterested. The series does not get bogged down in the complexities of medical science, the context in which the discoveries were made, or the economic barriers that often ration today's medical miracles.
Jeffrey Tuchman, writer and director of "Mavericks, Miracles and Medicine," said he made a concerted effort to tell the story of science through the characters and find historians who "reveled in the narrative of history of medicine, who had the same glee."
The first segment shows a man undergoing heart surgery to repair a valve. The producers dart back and forth in time, from the heart patient who sails through his operation (comforted by a caring surgeon and not hassled by anyone asking for insurance cards) to the pioneers who made this surgery possible, like the men who discovered the circulation of the blood and general anesthesia.
Randi,
What exactly are you trying to say about the tv show?
Dr Semmelweis died for us, those of us today who can have children without dying because doctors finally realized that Dr Semmelweis was right all along! I have not seen this tv show, but I think that people should know about this great hero, who in fact if it were not for him Doctors would still be killing their patients simply because they were too proud to wash their hands between patients. If you ask me I think that Dr Semmelweis deserves to have a motion picture made about his life story and the struggles that he went through to save the lives of many, including himself.....but you know what the sad part about it all is that he died from a simple cut that was treated by a nurse who didnt wash her hands, and while in a mental hospital!
He died because of the truth.....and sadly to say our truth today is that we want to forget about heros like DR Semmelweis just to save the face of Doctors today, especially American Doctors who at that time ordered that any Doctor caught washing his hands would no longer be allowed to practice medicine!!!!!!!
Please clarify your post, because I am confused about how you feel about this man and his story,or are you just picking on the person who dare tell it?
Sincerely,
historyx
09-16-2003 10:49 PM
