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Citation needed

No it isn't.

you claim

No I didn't. I was very careful to make clear this was my opinion only ("I suspect" and "I can imagine scenarios").

As I noted, lime wasn't obviously beneficial, because Semmelweis claimed it removed the "cadaveric particles", and yet people were still dying when there should have been no "cadaveric particles" around (ie, no one had died).

It's like the story of how scurvy started happening again in the early 20th century with Scott in the Antarctic[1]. In the 18th century scurvy had been defeated by drinking (fresh) lime juice on long sea voyages, without a correct understanding of the mechanisms involved.

Read the linked article about how it happened.

[1] http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm



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