In 1847, a doctor cut childbed-fever deaths in his ward from 18% to 2%.

Ignaz Semmelweis figured out that doctors were carrying something deadly from the autopsy room to women in labor. Wash your hands in a chlorine solution, he said, and mothers stop dying. Then he proved it. The number on his ward dropped through the floor. The medical establishment shrugged. So he wrote open letters calling the doctors who ignored him murderers. Told a roomful of men who'd taken an oath to protect life that they were, right now, killing their patients. He was correct about that too. Which is why it didn't work. He took the hardest thing a person can hear, "you are the reason they died," and made it harder. Being right made him careless. He was so obviously correct that he stopped doing the work of getting anyone to hear him. The idea was buried with him for 20 years, until Pasteur and Lister said the same thing in a language people could take. When I was advising, I sat across from a couple who did it all right. Saved hard, never touched it. Yet they were so conservative it would never work on their timeline. To retire when they wanted, we'd have to move them off 80% bonds. Blow up an allocation that took us a year to get to. I had the math in front of me. I was right. But I knew if I opened with "blow it up," I'd lose them, so I didn't. "Here's what your numbers look like at 30% equities." It took 18 months to get them where the numbers said they needed to be on day one. Semmelweis died right. I'll learn his lesson and take 18 months.