Iatrogenics
“The famously mistreated Austro-Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis had observed that more women died giving birth in hospitals than giving birth on the street. He called the establishment doctors a bunch of criminals—which they were: the doctors who kept killing patients could not accept his facts or act on them since he “had no theory” for his observations. Semmelweis entered a state of depression, helpless to stop what he saw as murders, disgusted at the attitude of the establishment. He ended up in an asylum, where he died, ironically, from the same hospital fever he had been warning against. Semmelweis’s story is sad: a man who was punished, humiliated, and even killed for shouting the truth in order to save others. The worst punishment was his state of helplessness in the face of risks and unfairness. But the story is also a happy one—the truth came out eventually, and his mission ended up paying off, with some delay. And the final lesson is that one should not expect laurels for bringing the truth.”
— Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (Incerto Book 3) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb