Washing our hands is one of the most announced form of hygiene in our world today and every child is thought to wash their hands. It is even sang in rhymes, poems, and written in novels. We have learned to wash our hands when we want to eat, when we go to the toilet, when we are outside playing, after gardening and when we are going to bed.
Washing our hands have even become a big deal following the 2019/2020 shut down in the world. Posters and banners were shared around to sensitize people of the importance of washing hands but did you know that there was a time when washing hand was a controversial issue in medicine especially among doctors? I will be sharing the story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis and his revolutionary discovery as well as how it led him to his early death.
We are going to the City of Buddha in Hungary and this was the city where Dr. Ignaz was born on July 1st 1818. As at this time, the two city of Buda and Pest hadn't come together to become Budapest which is the capital today. In 1837, he moved to Austria to study law at the University of Vienna. While he excelled in law, he began to lose interest in the course and wanted to change to something he had more passion for. He became friends with a medical student in his first year as a law student and was invited for an anatomy class with his friend and it was at this point that he decided to study medicine.
He moved to the University of Pest to study medicine now known as Eotvos Lorand University but returned to the university of Vienna in 1840 to further his education and in 1844 he earned his doctorate of medicine degree and became a doctor. He applied for internal medicine but was denied twice and so he decided to opt for obstetrics and midwifery. Soon he move to the Vienna general Hospital where he began to receive training on surgical procedures for obstetrics.
The hospital had a ward division for female midwives and midwifery male doctors and he noticed that there was something different in the doctors and midwives ward. The midwife wards had lower mortality compared to the doctor ward and he noticed that one of the reason for this death was child birth fever or postpartum infection. The symptoms would include chills, fever, abdominal pain, and foul smelling discharge which happened within 24 hours to 10 days after child birth.
Today we know the cause of child birth fever is Streptococcus Pyogenes bacteria but at this time, no one knew what it was. At the time, because Miasma/Humorism was a thing, people believed it was as a result of the doctors bringing bad energy to the hospital that caused their illness and death. Most women demanded that they be taken to the midwives ward instead of in the doctor's ward.
He decided to find out what was going on and he realized that doctors after an autopsy would deliver a baby without any hygiene while the female ward wasn't doing any autopsy. He then to the doctors to begin washing with chlorine hand wash and it was at this point that the mortality rate in the doctor's world dropped to the same as the midwive's ward but some doctors including his boss attributed the decline to a change in the ventilation in the hospital.
Other doctors also met his hypothesis with numerous backlash outside the hospital and at the Vienna Medical Association. Doctors wanted him to be able to prove that there was a biological pathogen that was being transferred from the doctors to the mothers and since he couldn't prove it, the blacklash didn't stop. He moved to the University of Pest in 1855 to become the head of Obstetrics. He got married and began to write papers on his finding but he was receiving a lot of criticisms including the fact that his words were naive, horror language and unprofessional language.
Soon his criticism started to affect his mental health and he had gone into depression so that at 1865 he had began to drink excessively and had distanced himself from his family. Soon, his family decided to do something to him and they lured him to a mental asylum where he was admitted involuntarily where he was tortured anytime he wanted to escape. This torture led to his death at the age of 47 and it was after his death that his work began to slowly get recognition in the medical world.
When next you are finding it difficult to wash your hands, remember that there was a person who lost his life as a result of trying to explain the correlation between unclean hands and fatal illnesses. Remember Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis who is the father of hand hygiene and infectious control especially when it comes to saving mothers.
Post Reference
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7240806/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3881728/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7476981/
https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/13/3/233
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6333090/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6053623/
Image Reference
Image 1 || Flickr || clean hands
Image 2 ||| Wikimedia Commons || portrait of Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis
Image 3 || Wikimedia Commons || Streptococcus pyogenes
Image 4 || Wikimedia || Semmelweis Ignác sírja
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Wow!! Life seem difficult during the 1800s especially with their belief in the theory of Humor where fluid, bile, and blood balancing was a thing. It is very difficult to make people change their mind but his was met with terrible actions. Now, we all wash our hands before doing anything without the knowledge that the story behind the practice was one of criticism, torture, and death.
It is funny how we just say it casually now, making it look like it didn't pass through rigorous criticism and harsh process. At least today we know better to wash our hands regularly and it has saved a lot of lives.
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