People The World Mocked Who Turned Out To Be Right
Over the course of history, many scientific and medical discoveries have been ignored, mocked, or met with open hostility. A physician was thought to have lost his mind when he theorized that medical personnel simply washing their hands before examining pregnant patients greatly reduced the chances of the patients dying of childbed fever; he eventually was confined to a mental institution. The British explorer who discovered that members of a lost expedition may have resorted to cannibalism in a failed attempt to survive became the victim of a vicious smear campaign that damaged his reputation and may have cost him a knighthood. Both men's theories turned out to be spot-on.