Conspiracy Theories that turned out not to be "Theories".

[truedelphi]

94. There were two prior historical medical events that

galvanized the public to take various steps to remedy a major health problem, and both occurred long before Pasteur. So I don't see that in the 17 and 18 hundreds, that you would need to have a spelled out theory in order to get the public to make needed changes.

You have Ed Jennings, way back in the late 1700's, and he realized there was some principle involved in the fact that cow maids who suffered from a case of cow pox never developed a more deadly disease, smallpox, and from that observation he went on to create a vaccine for small pox.

It would have been nice if Jennings could have had a discussion with the public about the viral material and the microbes floating about inside sick people's bodies and bloodstreams, that caused smallpox and cow pox, but like you say, that theory didn't develop until Pasteur's studies in France between 1965 and 1887. Yet the public did embrace his idea of vaccines none the less.

Then, in 1854, a physician named John Snow discovered that he could trace all the cases of cholera that was then ravaging the city of London's populace back to a single pump handle and that when he removed the handle, the illness ceased.

Again, this proceeded the niceties of the discussion and theory of disease brought about by Pasteur, yet his idea was embraced even though the theory behind his notion of pump handle removal was not as sophisticated as you'd suspect.

I don't think that Semmelweiss needed a theory so much as he needed a forum. Had he been a teaching physician, he could have persuaded all his students to follow his lead, but instead he attempted to go head to head against some of the more prominent physicians in England, who were not willing to let an outsider shape the protocols of medicine without their approval.

Martin Luther King Jr met the same ego-based resistance inside the African American community, especially those of his colleagues inside the ministry when he wanted the civil Rights movement to take shape. Luckily for everyone, he decided that high school students and college students did not yet have a stake in their egos being inside or outside of the movement, so he took the movement ideals to them, and the rest is history.