Hello, welcome to the Excel Stillmore podcast.

I am your host, Chris Emerson, and we are here to talk about tips and strategies that you can employ to deepen your faith, improve your relationships, and just get the most out of your life.

Thank you for joining. Let's get started.

Today we begin with a story. I need to tell you the story of a doctor named Ignes Simmelweis.

I will give you an abbreviated version, but you might want to check

this story out later. It's extremely interesting. He was a doctor in Europe in the 1840s. He

oversaw a hospital in that area that delivered babies and did a variety of other medical treatments,

but unfortunately, they had a mortality rate for expectant mothers of 10%.

That was high.

Even in those days, that was way off the charts high.

In fact, there was a hospital right across the street that had only a

4% mortality rate. But the fact that two and a half times as many mothers died in his hospital

as died across the street was something that tormented Dr. Simmelweis month after month. What was interesting is that his

hospital was filled with doctors, educated men, talented people. Now, the other hospital had

talented people as well, but very few doctors. In fact, it was run almost exclusively by nurses.

This baffled he and all of the doctors, and so he started studying what they were doing.

He began to match up as many things as possible from their hospital in his.

He matched up everything, sheets and bedding, room decor, pictures on the wall.

At one point he made sure that the same clergy or priests that were in one hospital were

visiting the other, and nothing made a difference.

So desperate was the situation at one point

that women who were scheduled to deliver there

...