in pathological work at the same time that they were taking
out their courses in obstetrics, who caused the havoc among the
patients in his (obstetrical) department in the hospital. The
death-rate in the hands of these obstetrical attendants, who came
directly to the lying-in department from their work in pathology, was
sometimes as high as one in five. Semmelweiss insisted that this state
of affairs must cease, and that while the students were doing the
pathological work they must not be allowed to attend obstetrical
cases. This at once raised a storm of opposition in the university.
Poor Semmelweiss lost his position as a consequence of it. In the
midst of the rancorous discussion that followed, Semmelweiss lost his
reason also for a time, and had to be cared for in an insane asylum.
It is well recognized that his beneficent discovery was for him the
cause of many years of unhappiness.

Nor must it be thought that it is only with regard to medical
discoveries that such opposition--bitter, personal, rancorous and
persecutory--can be aroused. While it might be thought that the great
minds in the ordinary natural sciences would have no reason for the
personal element which more or less necessarily enters into medical
discussion because men had been applying for gain the notions that now
are proved to be incorrect, and their reputations have been made on
such applications, to think that all was placid and quiet in the
physical sciences would be a serious mistake. Long ago Virgil asked in
a famous line, "Is it possible that there can be such great wrath in
divine minds?"--"_tantaene animae celestibus irae_"--and we might be
tempted to ask, can there be such foolish intolerance on the part of
scientific teachers? but the answer would be the same in each case.
Virgil found that the gods were very human in this respect, and anyone
who knows the history of science knows the scientists are like the
pagan dieties, when their conservative spirit is aroused, and when
they are up in arms, as they fondly think, to protect their beloved
science from foolish innovators.

{408}

A typical example of the sort of opposition which a modern discoverer
in science meets with is to be found in the life of Ohm, after whom,
because of his discovery of the law of electrical resistance, the unit
of resistance is called. When he made his discovery Ohm was working in
the Gymnasium at Cologne. The leading physicists of the day could not
bring t