We all recognize the importance of washing our hands these days in order to prevent infection. But a custom that now seems quite logical to us was considered a quirk 150 years ago. Back then, doctors examined the patients after contact with decaying corpses, without washing their hands, of course!
Semmelweis Ignaz (1818-1865) was a Hungarian physician. He obtained a doctorate in obstetrics and assisted professor Klein at the Viennese General Maternity Hospital. Dr. Semmelweis is known to this day as the "father of hand washing". His most important contributions to medical knowledge include promoting hand washing to minimize the risk of infection. Apparently, the society of that time, completely unfamiliar with the rules of hygiene today, was not ready for the good advice of Dr. Semmelweis. The doctor was heavily criticized by his colleagues and ended up in a mental hospital where he died through direct contact with deadly bacteria.
Dr. Semmelweis, who worked as an obstetrician at some point in his career, realized in 1847 that washing hands by medical personnel could reduce patient mortality in hospitals. The disinfection of hands he used before examining women after childbirth caused a radical reduction in mortality from puerperal fever, which was the nightmare of maternity hospitals at that time. Despite this, Dr. Semmelweis was labeled "insane" by the medical community and he did eventually go mad, because he had a hard time dealing with the constant harassment of his colleagues.
19th century European hospitals were extremely dirty places. They lacked any sanitary standards and hygiene rules. Patient bedding was almost always dirty, stained with blood and other body fluids. In those days, people didn't wash their hands at all. Even the doctors did not care about asepsis (avoiding microbial infections). This was because the medics of the time did not have a clue about the routes of transmission of infectious diseases, so they did not try in any way to minimize the risk of the spread of pathogens, which they simply did not know and did not take into account.
Ignaz Semmelweis was a brave physician in the history of medicine. He was a key link in the development of the germ theory. He observed that 40 percent of women in labor who were admitted to the Viennese central hospital became seriously ill and died. Women who chose to give birth at home, and even those who accidentally gave birth on the street, were much less likely to suffer from various diseases than women giving birth in hospitals! Why was this happening? Well, the dirt in the medical facilities of that time and the complete lack of knowledge about the methods of transmission of pathogens contributed to this.
In 1847, Semmelweis witnessed the deterioration of his health and the death of his colleague and friend after he was injured on the hand with a dirty scalpel during an autopsy. Semmelweis began to associate the cause of some diseases with contact with decomposed cadavers without even having a clue about the microbes in them. Dr. Semmelweis noticed that the women in labor, attended by surgeons, often suffered from puerperal fever. These doctors also dealt with autopsies. In the maternity wards there were also patients who were not approached by surgeons, but only by midwives. The latter did not touch the bodies of the deceased, and the patients who were attended only by midwives did not usually get sick and returned home in full health. In this way, Dr. Semmelweis concluded that contact with the corpse caused maternal fever in the ward patients.
Semmelweis concluded that the infected fingers of surgeons lead corpse particles to the sexual organs of pregnant women, and above all to the cervix, which causes serious health complications in pregnant women. As a solution, he placed a container of water and chlorinated lime in the surgical ward, setting a rule for all his colleagues that they would wash their hands thoroughly before dealing with live patients.
As a result of the doctor's radical actions, the mortality rate in the maternity ward dropped to 1 percent! Semmelweis obtained practical results - a significant decrease in postpartum mortality. However, he was not able to precisely explain the mechanism of infection, because in his time the pathogenicity of bacteria and viruses was not known yet. Therefore, his theory was not recognized by the medical community.
Dr. Semmelweis realized that diseases can be transmitted not only through contact with the bodies of deceased patients, but also through contact with living but sick people. As a result of this discovery, the doctor ordered medics to wash their hands thoroughly not only after autopsies, but also to wash their hands and medical instruments additionally before each subsequent examination, which angered students and medical staff.
The medical community was not going to accept Dr. Semmelweis, concerning the sterilization of surgical instruments and washing hands before the examination of patients, surgery or collection from women of childbirth.
Despite the discoveries of Dr. Semmelweis, most doctors of the time were skeptical about his theories and recommendations. Some of them were downright spiteful and under no circumstances wanted to wash their hands before contacting patients, even after performing an autopsy. Semmelweis called them "murderers" and was consequently heavily slandered. The doctor soon began to suffer from depression and obsessive disorder.
Due to constant harassment from his colleagues, Dr. Semmelweis worsened over time. On July 31, the doctor was taken to a psychiatric hospital in Vienna, where he died on August 13, 1865 of the same bacteria with which he fought. The cause of death was an infected wound that was possibly the result of a fight. It is rumored to this day that Dr. Semmelweis could have deliberately injected himself with pathogens harvested from a decaying corpse to prove his theory to the world.
Bibliography:
1 - National Geographic - Ignaz Semmelweis, the doctor who discovered that washing your hands saves lives.
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