Look at the history of medicine. Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian physician who proposed that doctors should wash their hands before delivering babies, was ridiculed, ostracized, and finally committed to an asylum where he died of a wound infection. He was a heretic against the orthodoxy of “gentlemanly medicine” (doctors were proud that their hands smelled of corpses because it proved they worked hard). Today, Semmelweis is a hero. The doctors who rejected him are footnotes.
The tragedy of history is that we so often burn the people we later canonize. The comedy of history is that the orthodoxy never learns. It always believes this time the heretic is truly dangerous, truly evil, truly beyond the pale. And yet, the heretics keep whispering, keep writing, keep choosing. Heretic
4.5/5 – A razor-sharp, brilliantly acted thesis on doubt that proves the most dangerous monster in the room is the one who reads books. Look at the history of medicine
For those who have returned from that house, let’s talk about why Heretic has lingered in my mind like a half-remembered nightmare. Today, Semmelweis is a hero