The Handwashing Heretic

In 1721, a smallpox epidemic swept through Boston. Desperate for answers, a local minister named Cotton Mather suggested something radical: infect healthy people on purpose.

He wasn’t a doctor. But he had listened to African slaves, who told him about a method practiced back home—scratching a bit of smallpox pus into the skin to build immunity.

The response? Outrage. He was called a lunatic. A mob even threw a bomb through his window with a note: “COTTON MATHER, YOU DOG, DAMN YOU.”

But he persisted. And the data was clear: those who were inoculated were far more likely to survive. Today, we call it vaccination. Back then, they called it madness.

Two generations later, another man tried to save lives with a radical idea. And like Mather, the world made him pay for it.

Vienna, 1846. The air in the General Hospital is thick with the scent of carbolic and death. Women scream in labor. Babies are born, only to die days later. The hospital has a problem—a big one. Its maternity ward has become a death trap.

Two clinics operate side by side. One staffed by male doctors and medical students. The other by female midwives.

The difference? One has a terrifyingly higher mortality rate.

Women beg to be admitted to the midwife clinic. Some even opt to give birth in the streets, convinced their chances are better than going into the ward run by men. They're right. In some months, the doctor-led clinic sees maternal death rates as high as 18%. It’s become so routine that people refer to it by name: childbed fever.

Into this mess walks a young Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis.

He doesn’t look like a revolutionary. He’s quiet, awkward, methodical. But he can’t ignore the numbers. Why are women dying at triple the rate under doctors’ care?

Semmelweis begins investigating. He tracks cases. He interviews staff. He obsesses over patterns. And then it hits him.

The only real difference? The doctors perform autopsies. The midwives don’t.

Back then, autopsies were hands-on. No gloves. No scrubbing. No understanding of germs. Doctors would dissect a corpse in the morning… then deliver babies in the afternoon.

Semmelweis begins to suspect that something—some invisible “cadaverous particle”—is being transferred from the dead to the living. And it’s killing mothers.

So he makes a change.

He orders everyone in the doctor’s ward to wash their hands with a chlorinated lime solution before seeing patients.

The results are immediate. Death rates plunge. In some months, the mortality rate drops to nearly zero. The difference is staggering, undeniable, and backed by data.

He expects applause.

Instead, he’s met with fury.

His colleagues reject the idea outright. They don’t like being told they’re the problem. They don’t believe in “invisible particles.” They mock him, resist the handwashing policy, and accuse him of professional insult.

Semmelweis grows increasingly isolated. His tone becomes angrier, more confrontational. He writes open letters calling doctors murderers. His relationships fray. Eventually, he’s dismissed from the hospital altogether.

He spends his later years spiraling. His behavior grows erratic. He’s committed to an asylum at age 47—where he dies just weeks later, after being beaten by guards.

He never lives to see his idea proven. That would take another 20 years, when Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister finally confirm germ theory.

Today, Semmelweis is hailed as a pioneer. Statues bear his name. Medical textbooks honor his discovery.

But in his lifetime, he was mocked, silenced, and discarded—for trying to save lives by asking doctors to do the simplest thing imaginable: wash their hands.

It was a simple idea. And it could have saved thousands.

But simplicity, as it turns out, isn’t always easy.

In personal finance, we love the idea that success must be complicated. Fancy models. Exotic investments. Sophisticated strategies. But the reality? Most of the habits that lead to long-term success are shockingly basic.

Spend less than you make. Save automatically. Avoid unnecessary debt. Don’t panic when the market drops. Rebalance now and then. Rinse. Repeat.

Simple.

But ask around, and you’ll find resistance—sometimes fierce.

People roll their eyes. They chase the complicated stuff instead. They try to time the market or skip the “boring” steps. They’ll do anything but wash their hands.

Why? Because simple advice puts the responsibility squarely on us. It leaves little room to blame someone else. And like those 19th-century doctors, we’d rather not believe that we could be part of the problem.

Semmelweis wasn’t asking for brilliance. He wasn’t demanding revolution. He was just asking people to stop and do the obvious thing.

And they couldn’t bring themselves to do it.

In finance, the same principle applies. What moves the needle isn’t complexity—it’s consistency. The hard part isn’t figuring out what to do. The hard part is actually doing it… and sticking with it.

Simplicity only works when we take it seriously.