What single human has done the most damage to the progression of humanity in the history of mankind
Channel: awarded reddit comment
Date: 2022-07-22

What single human has done the most damage to the progression of humanity in the history of mankind



Guy de Chauliac. He was a surgeon in the 1300s who vehemently spoke out against another fellow surgeon, Theodoric Borgognoni. Theodoric was a surgeon who wrote about his theories on proper wound care and believed that the best thing you can do to a wound is wrap it and keep it clean.

Guy hated what Theodoric was writing because it directly went against the teachings of Galen, an Ancient Greek surgeon who believed pus was the body’s way of balancing your humors. Guy’s teachings were widely accepted and it’s believed that his ignorance set the development of antisepsis in surgery back about 600 years.
Guy de Chauliac was born in the 1300’s not 1200’s as he was alive during the Black Death.

Ignaz Semmelweis was the guy who was thrown into a mental asylum for saying surgeons should wash their hands between seeing patients.
IIRC there was also a French physician who discovered some valuable kinds of anesthesics but was ignored by the medical community because he couldn't write in Latin
His name was Ambroise Paré. From Wikipedia: "Paré discovered that the soldiers treated with the boiling oil were in agony, whereas the ones treated with the ointment had recovered because of the antiseptic properties of turpentine. This proved this method's efficacy, and he avoided cauterization thereafter. However, treatments such as this were not widely used until many years later. He published his first book The method of curing wounds caused by arquebus and firearms in 1545."

Injured soldiers continued to be treated with boiling oil for many years because Paré's discovery was snubbed.