count your sanitation blessings

Back in the day, people didn't know about germs. They didn't know why people would get so sick in hospitals and die...even from a natural thing like childbirth. Turns out, med students would spend the morning doing autopsies (without gloves), literally wipe their hands on their jackets, and scoot on up the maternity ward to give exams to women in labor. Ironically, they'd infect them with group A strep (the strep throat kind of strep) that the women died of they were just examining.

Women would be dragged kicking and screaming into the hospital when they went into labor, because they knew they had a 50% chance of dying there.

Ignaz Semmelweiss instituted antiseptic procedures in 1847, whereby physicians were required to wash hands in chloride solution. Interestingly enough, it did NOT go well. Doctor's were outraged that doctors, who took an oath to cure people, were in fact killing people. Throughout history, the mark of a good doctor was how much blood, puss, guts and other bodily fluids were on their jacket. They never washed them. Ever.

Fortunately for us, it was shown that when doctors washed their hands, disease rates went down.

up next: hospital infections.