Medical breakthroughs that were initially ridiculed or rejected

[1] Although medical science most often advances

incrementally on the basis of an ever-accumulating body of 

evidence, occasionally leaps forward are made. Quite often 

[4] these leaps fly in the face of conventional wisdom, and are 

ridiculed or rejected by the medical establishment.

Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician 

[7] working in a maternity ward in Vienna in the mid-19th century. 

He came to the conclusion that puerperal fever was contagious 

by observing that students and physicians were performing 

[10] autopsies and then attending new mothers, many of whom 

would soon become ill and die. 

He then advocated that doctors in obstetric clinics 

[13] disinfect their hands following autopsies. The result: at the 

clinic in which his hand-washing policy was implemented, the 

puerperal fever mortality rates dropped from 18.3% to less than 

[16] 2% in fewer than 6 months. 

Despite Semmelweis’s demonstration of the value of 

antiseptic techniques, by and large his ideas were rejected by 

[19] the medical community. Because of this, he began publishing 

a series of vitriolic “open letters” against his critics. Isolated 

and unpredictable, Semmelweis was admitted against his will 

[22] to an insane asylum, where he died after two weeks. 

Gabriel Miller. Internet: (adapted). 

Based on the text, judge the following item. 

People thought Semmelweis was crazy because of his defense of antiseptic hand-washing.