The Semmelweis Reflex: Truth Is Hard on the Ears

As you may know, Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, sought out spiritualists and attended seances in the years after her husband’s assassination. What many people do not realize is that she brought these purported mediums into the White House while Lincoln was in office. One of the Lincolns' sons died before he was elected president, and another died during his first term—while Lincoln struggled to defeat the Confederacy and reunite the country.

President Lincoln did not buy the hocus-pocus of seances, but he tolerated them as harmless comforts for Mrs. Lincoln. During that era, many people believed that the living were separated from the dead by a spiritual veil that could be lifted by a skilled medium. Many charlatans, of course, preyed on the gullible.

For example, William Mumler, a photographer, took a picture of Mrs. Lincoln which appeared to show the late president standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. This, of course, was merely trick photography. But it reinforced Mrs. Lincoln’s belief in the occult.

One medium who enjoyed frequent access to the White House during the Lincoln years was Charles J. Colchester. The president knew Colchester only in passing, but Mrs. Lincoln was friendly with him. A few days before the assassination, Colchester warned Lincoln that he was in danger of being killed.

The Civil War had just ended. Southerners were angry and bitter, and their hatred of Lincoln still raw. Many of Lincoln’s friends warned him of assassination rumors and urged him to take extra precautions. Lincoln, despite his intellect and wisdom, saw no reason for undue alarm. To his way of thinking, any assassination attempt would be an act of suicide for the assassin. Lincoln reasoned that a killer would value his life as much as Lincoln valued his. No one in his right mind would kill a president.

Lincoln didn’t take Colchester seriously as a channeler of the dead, and perhaps for that reason he didn’t heed the man’s advice about death threats. But when another friend warned Lincoln that vengeful Southerners might want him killed, the president replied, “Colchester keeps telling me that.”

Charles J. Colchester was good friends with John Wilkes Booth.

The Semmelweis Effect

A few years before Lincoln’s assassination, a physician in Hungary was having the same problem as Colchester—talking sense to a “brick wall” that wouldn’t listen. For Semmelweis, the problem was not one man but the entire medical profession.

The practice at that time was for doctors to perform autopsies on every patient who died. In maternity hospitals, where mortality rates from childbed fever were sky-high, this often meant going from the autopsy table to the delivery room. The germ theory of disease was not yet known. Doctors might wipe the blood off their hands following an autopsy, then deliver a baby several minutes later.

Semmelweis noticed that maternal deaths from childbed fever were three times less likely in hospitals where midwives delivered babies than in hospitals where physicians attended the mother. Why would doctors be thrice as deadly as midwives? He correctly suspected that doctors were transferring “cadaverous particles” from autopsies to women during deliveries.

Semmelweis implemented a practice of having doctors in his clinic sanitize their hands in a chlorine solution after performing autopsies. Childbed fever deaths plummeted. But to say that the medical profession didn’t want to hear it would be an understatement.

Not only did his professional peers reject the idea that their own hands could be killing patients, they ridiculed, insulted, and ostracized Semmelweis. He did not react well to this, and returned their vituperation with equal venom. He was eventually committed to an asylum, whether for an actual psychotic break or in retribution. That was in 1865, ironically the same year as Lincoln’s assassination. Two weeks after being committed, he died from an infected wound, which may have been the result of a beating.

Today, Semmelweis University, a medical school in Budapest, is named in his honor.

Conclusion

Lincoln would not hear the truth and died. Semmelweis spoke the truth no one wanted to hear, and died. A cynic might say that the moral of this story is, “truth kills.” But it is actually failure to heed the truth that kills. Failure to heed the truth about COVID-19 has killed many, for example.

Social ills plaguing this country and the world often come down to the simple failure of people and politicians to squarely face the truth and deal with it. We as individuals are susceptible to this same error.

Carl Jung said that “neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” In other words, by refusing to deal with issues in the here and now, we only compound the problem. Enduring legitimate suffering is the price of ending it or at least coming to terms with it.

Here are two posts I’ve written that suggest some ways to deal with life’s difficulties: "Refuse to Be Resilient" and "Emotional Strength in Uncertain Times."

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” —John 8:32

© Dale Hartley. Connect with me on social media.