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Inside This Issue 1 A Family’s Resilience After a Tragic Car Wreck 2 Understanding Utility Easements When Do Personal Injury Cases Go to Trial? 3 Kevin Takes Earth Day to Heart Tasty Spinach Artichoke Dip 4 A Time Before Doctors Washed Their Hands
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The Horrifying History of Hand-Washing
Before Doctors Kept It Clean
We expect our doctors to wash their hands before examining us — it’s a no-brainer. But more than 100 years ago, the idea wasn’t only laughable — it was heresy. The first doctor who implemented mandatory hand- washing in a hospital saw swift improvements in patient mortality rates, but the backlash among other doctors came just as quickly. Before germ theory began to catch on in the late 1800s, doctors believed illnesses were caused by “miasma,” bad smells that originated in swamps, garbage, and decomposing matter. While the concept sounds strange now, convincing a doctor that miasma didn’t exist would be much like telling a modern scientist the Earth is flat. The idea of germs or viruses contradicted everything they thought they knew.
mortality rates between two maternity wards at his hospital. The ward run by midwives had a much lower maternal mortality rate than the one staffed by doctors. After watching a colleague die of infection after cutting himself during an autopsy, Semmelweis determined something similar might be happening to maternity ward patients. Many doctors were examining mothers-to-be after performing autopsies — but midwives weren’t. Semmelweis blamed the problem on miasma from corpses. Nevertheless, he instituted sterilization and hand- washing procedures in the hospital in 1848. The maternal mortality rate dropped substantially in the doctor-run ward, becoming on par with the midwives. Semmelweis had solved the problem. Yet, his colleagues disagreed. Other doctors at the hospital resented the suggestion
that they’d been causing their patients’ deaths. And Semmelweis allegedly didn’t make it any easier, behaving in ways others found condescending and arrogant. Further, Semmelweis had no hard proof that hand-washing and sterilization worked. Eventually, the other doctors stopped washing their hands. Semmelweis lost his job at the hospital and, sadly, died in a mental institution. Fortunately, for the rest of the world, Semmelweis was not the only hand-washing proponent. Though they likely came by the idea independently, Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes and a nurse, Florence Nightingale, encouraged the practice. Their championing and the emergence of germ theory gave us medical professionals who now have much safer habits — and, hopefully, the humility to acknowledge that they always have more to learn.
Still, a Hungarian doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis began to notice startling
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