>It was thus difficult for Semmelweis to make a "scientific" case for why the lime worked
Aren't you supposed to regard empiricism above all else in science? While holding to that rule would force Semmelweis to alter his theory as well, the observation of the highly reduced mortality rates should have forced the medical powers that be to reconsider things also - the burden is on them to make a scientific case for why lime had nothing to do with the decreased mortality rates.
I agree there were probably other reasons they fired him, but I think that only helps Aaron's points.
It is not evident that Semmelweis himself regarded empiricism above all else. Rather, it seems like Semmelweis made an empirical observation (death rates plummeted when attendants washed their hands in lime), but then jumped to a conclusion (lime was removing cadaverine particles) and fixated on that conclusion instead of of the observation. Convert the narrative (lossily) to modern science, and imagine someone far more focused on their journal article than on saving lives.
Semmelweis went "on tilt" with his hypothesis. Even after doctors adopted a regime of disinfecting hand washes, hospitals still saw a significant rate of childbed fever. Semmelweis demanded of the scientific establishment that they recognize cadaverine tissue as the cause, going so far as to suggest that tissues in the mother were occasionally being crushed during childbirth, and later becoming gangrene, and thus mothers were infecting themselves.
Again: my point isn't that Semmelweis didn't make an important discovery, or that the scientific establishment of the time didn't miss a critically important opportunity; my point is that there is more to the story than the missed opportunity of Semmelweis' detractors.
I don't much care about the injustice of Semmelweis losing his post at a hospital in the 1840s. I am, on the other hand, fascinated by how poor framing and communication, close-mindedness, and overall bloody-mindedness prevented Semmelweis himself from becoming the godfather of the germ theory of medicine.
Aren't you supposed to regard empiricism above all else in science? While holding to that rule would force Semmelweis to alter his theory as well, the observation of the highly reduced mortality rates should have forced the medical powers that be to reconsider things also - the burden is on them to make a scientific case for why lime had nothing to do with the decreased mortality rates.
I agree there were probably other reasons they fired him, but I think that only helps Aaron's points.