I hope you recognize that when you say "A simple way to sum the problem up: Semmelweis advocated handwashing... for staff who had been conducting autopsies" you also confirm that there were actually the doctors that did autopsies who didn't disinfect their hands. So he was obviously right. You can just claim that he set his goals too narrow, but even that much was not accepted by others.
Not at all. Semmelweis thought something associated with death was what was killing people (eg, he chose chlorinated limes which he found best removed the stink of death).
I suspect the focus on death and dead people meant people focused on that, and "proved" to themselves he was "wrong".
I can imagine scenarios where doctors dealt with one woman who had a good birth experience, didn't use the Semmelweis handwashing method (because the first woman didn't have the death particles) and then the next woman got infected and died. To many (unfortunately), that would prove his theory was wrong.
Citation needed, since you claim that doctors actually used the results of experiments to disprove him but at the same time didn't heed to the results of the experiments that showed that using lime was obviously beneficial.
No I didn't. I was very careful to make clear this was my opinion only ("I suspect" and "I can imagine scenarios").
As I noted, lime wasn't obviously beneficial, because Semmelweis claimed it removed the "cadaveric particles", and yet people were still dying when there should have been no "cadaveric particles" around (ie, no one had died).
It's like the story of how scurvy started happening again in the early 20th century with Scott in the Antarctic[1]. In the 18th century scurvy had been defeated by drinking (fresh) lime juice on long sea voyages, without a correct understanding of the mechanisms involved.
I think you've mistaken the point of my comment; you appear to think I'm sticking up for 1840s surgical hygiene. If you read my comment all the way through, you'll see that that's not at all my point.
