The NY Times does an excellent recount of Ignac Semmelweis, a Hungarian obstetrician at the famed Vienna General Hospital who you might know for exhorting his fellow physicians to wash their hands before examining women about to deliver babies. Unfortunately, few listened. In the 19th century, roughly five women in 1,000 died in deliveries performed by midwives or at home. Alarmingly, when the delivery was performed by doctors in the best maternity hospitals in Europe and America, the death rate for women was often 10 to 20 times as great.
The modern day analogy is quite obvious. There are entire professions, such as chiropractic and naturopathic, that are advocating the use of basic strategies that allow the body to heal itself rather than rely on drugs and surgery to solve disease symptoms. There are a few traditional physicians, like myself, who have joined their chorus, but for the most part our recommendations, like Semmelweis, are falling on deaf ears.
But this won't last forever folks. You can't possibly fool all the people forever. Just like the women who were dying at the infected hands of traditional doctors, modern day consumers are dying in droves at the hands of physicians whose minds are corrupted by the drug companies' evil influence and have been able to become the third leading cause of death in the United States. Fortunately, by reading and applying information on this site, and similar sites and periodicals you can escape the paradigm and achieve high levels of health.
New York Times October 7, 2003 Free Registration Required