On Global Handwashing Day it is interesting to tell what the history of this process is, because the discovery of the importance of hand washing has not been an easy path at all.
It is quite evident that the hygienic processes that we know and maintain today are not the same as those used until the nineteenth century, in fact, in the mid-nineteenth century puerperal sepsis or childbed fever caused the death of between 10 and 35% of parturient patients.
That is why, in 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis strengthened his proposal to wash his hands with a calcium hypochlorite solution before treating this type of patient because his observations concluded that the mortality of patients treated by obstetricians was three to five times higher than in patients treated by midwives.
As a conclusion to his research on the direct relationship between proper hand hygiene and the treatment of parturient patients, Semmelweis published the work Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever in which he proposes measures to prevent and control this disease in which hand washing was included.
However, despite demonstrating that deep hand washing by obstetricians managed to reduce mortality from puerperal fever to less than 1%, Semmelweis’ theory was rejected by the scientific community because many doctors felt blamed for suggesting that they were responsible for the death of pregnant women as a result of possible malpractice.
This fact was a turning point in the life of Ignaz Semmelweis, who would end up dying in 1865 two weeks after being interned in a mental institution. Constant clashes with the contemporary medical community and a possible illness were the cause of his forced admission to the psychiatric center of Lazarettgasse.
It was not until 1879, 14 years after his death, that Louis Pasteur publicly acknowledged semmelweis’ merit after confirming the theory of germs as the cause of infections.
This is, without any doubt, a tortuous story surrounded by controversy, because to this day the real causes of his death are still unknown, having written several hypotheses including a beating by the guards of the mental institution with fatal consequences.
