As obvious and rational as it might now be, the act of washing hands to prevent infections wasn’t so apparent up until the late 1800s. Back when doctors and medical students would move from dissecting a corpse straight to performing surgery on a patient, what is now known as infectious diseases were attributed to various reasons, and as every human being is in someway distinct from others, it was suggested that the cause of every death was too (Semmelweis seal., n.d.).
In the 1840’s, and due to an increasing rate of puerperal fever (also known as childbed fever) amongst new mothers, which is a condition that occurs when a woman experiences an infection related to giving birth (Ataman A., n.d.). A Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that mortalities from puerperal fever can be remarkably reduced by the simple act of washing hands. He first introduced chlorinated lime solutions as hand wash for interns who had performed autopsies, which drastically reduced the mortality rate for childbed fever from 10-35% to 1-2% and he became known as “The Savior Of The Mothers” (Semmelweis seal., n.d.). …show more content…
This was because Semmelweis’s observations were against the medical assumptions at that time. The dominant theory of diseases was an imbalance of “four humours” in the body, a theory known as dyscrasia, for which the only treatment was bloodletting, along with the common idea that diseases are transmitted in the form of “bad air” (Ataman,Vatanoglu-Lutz,Yildirim, n.d.). which also caused for him to be dismissed from the
In the 1840’s, and due to an increasing rate of puerperal fever (also known as childbed fever) amongst new mothers, which is a condition that occurs when a woman experiences an infection related to giving birth (Ataman A., n.d.). A Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that mortalities from puerperal fever can be remarkably reduced by the simple act of washing hands. He first introduced chlorinated lime solutions as hand wash for interns who had performed autopsies, which drastically reduced the mortality rate for childbed fever from 10-35% to 1-2% and he became known as “The Savior Of The Mothers” (Semmelweis seal., n.d.). …show more content…
This was because Semmelweis’s observations were against the medical assumptions at that time. The dominant theory of diseases was an imbalance of “four humours” in the body, a theory known as dyscrasia, for which the only treatment was bloodletting, along with the common idea that diseases are transmitted in the form of “bad air” (Ataman,Vatanoglu-Lutz,Yildirim, n.d.). which also caused for him to be dismissed from the