I saw a tweet today morning that reminded me of an article I wrote myself a long time ago. Let me share it with you. Bear with me; I tell stories like an old man. The point will come.
In 1847, a Hungarian Doctor who worked as an obstetrician began to examine maternal death rates in the obstetric ward where he practised. He realised that in the midwife ward, death rates were below 4% and in the obs ward, it was upwards of 10%.
This is alarming. At the time, though, everyone “knew” that illnesses were caused by the imbalance of four fluids in the body (I will spare you the absurd amount of detail I went into about this). It was common knowledge, science, and fact. And those days, it didn't take much to be labelled insane or a witch.
His curiosity took him though and he discovered one major difference, he realized that in the midwifery ward, there were only midwives, whose only job was assisting women during delivery, whereas, in the doctors section, the doctors also helped dissect corpses and work on cadavers.
Dr. Ignaz, bless his heart, makes a “bold” suggestion: "Perhaps," he proposes, "everyone should wash their hands and tools in chlorine after working on a cadaver and before reaching in to help a woman birth a human." I don’t know, I am paraphrasing, of course.
The reaction? Imagine a room full of powdered wigs collectively exploding with laughter. You know how you hear something so dumb you laugh before getting annoyed? That was them.
Some “brave” doctors who complied and washed their hands saw death rates drop significantly. Like, faster than you can actually say, sepsis. Death rates were slashed by half, literally! But this was a small group of hand-washing rebels, dissidents, the vocal ones, the risk takers.
But even then, till Dr Ignaz's death, he was a laughingstock of the community despite having evidence of dropped death rates. The doctors, instead, felt that there was no real evidence of cause and effect. Eventually, he started calling doctors who skipped handwashing "murderers," which, you know, probably didn't help.
They declared him insane and locked him in an asylum, where he died, and this is tragically poetic; he died of sepsis. A man who begged people to wash their hands dies of the very condition he wanted to prevent, because people didn’t wash their hands.
So, why am I old man boring you with this tale of medical stubbornness or utter foolishness? Depending on what side of history you’re on. Well, because history tends to repeat itself, but with better Wi-Fi. The question is this: how do you beat the urge to think that because you don't understand something, the thing itself is incomprehensible?
In the age of Beyoncé's internet, we think we know things because we have access to a shit (Pardon my French) ton of information. In contrast, in 1847, they literally had access to, if not even close to, 0.1% of the information now available.
The point is that just because you can't immediately see the cause-and-effect relationship doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I am writing to encourage us, including myself, to exercise intellectual humility, surround ourselves with diverse perspectives, hold our beliefs with an open mind, and allow new information to change our views.
Lead with curiosity, ask why, be like my 7-year-old; ask why till someone’s ear falls off.
Next? Read. Please, read something, guys, read anything.
And the final leg of this emotional intelligence, all of which consists of skills you have to learn: Empathy, self-awareness, and open communication.
Sometimes, I feel we have lost our ability for basic humanness, mainly because we just don't want to “wash our hands.” We don’t want to look in the face of the hard work and humbling admissions it would take to do this.