Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. In this day and age, physicians and patients alike turn to modern medical technology for combating all types of diseases and afflictions.
The approach to the treatment of infectious diseases is no different, with many patients demanding prescriptions of antibiotics with the mildest of symptoms. Prior to the discovery of microbial pathogens, many people believed that diseases resulted from evil spirits.
However, scientific contributions during the s by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch proved that tiny microbes germs could cause fatal and deforming diseases such as tuberculosis and smallpox. Three individuals, Ignaz Semmelweis, John Snow, and Thomas Crapper, are attributed for initiating our daily lifestyle practices of handwashing, drinking clean water and toilet flushing. Imagine what life would be like if hand washing was optional among surgeons.
In developed countries, hand washing is heavily promoted for people of all ages and walks of life, but few people know the history of its beginnings. In Hungarian-born physician Ignaz Semmelweis made striking observations that lead to the practice of handwashing in medical clinics.
Through meticulous examination of clinical practices, he discovered that medical students who assisted in childbirth often did so after performing autopsies on patients who had died from sepsis of bacterial origin. After instituting a strict policy of hand-washing with a chlorinated antiseptic solution, mortality rates dropped from 7.
He could not convince his colleagues of the importance of his discovery. He was thought to have gone mad and died in an institution from sepsis from injuries he received there, much like many of the women he sought to protect.
Can you imagine what your life would be like if your only source of drinking water was contaminated with diarrhea from people dying of cholera? In midth century England, outbreaks of cholera of bacterial origin led to an epidemic of massive proportions, leaving tens of thousands of people dead and more ailing. Moses gave the Israelites detailed laws governing personal cleanliness. He also related cleanliness to health and religious purification.
Biblical accounts suggest that the Israelites knew that mixing ashes and oil produced a kind of hair gel. The Ebers Papyrus, a medical document from about B. C describes combining animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to form a soap-like material used for treating skin diseases, as well as for washing.
Instead, they cleaned their bodies with blocks of clay, sand, pumice and ashes, then anointed themselves with oil, and scraped off the oil axnd dirt with a metal instrument known as a strigil. They also used oil with ashes.
The Ancient Greeks also start using chamber pots. Common materials used were wool and rosewater. About years later, the more common Romans used a sponge soaked in salt water. VOA Africa Listen live. VOA Newscasts Latest program. VOA Newscasts. Previous Next. Historian Explores the Evolution of Personal Hygiene. April 22, AM.
Faiza Elmasry. Faiza Elmasry Faiza Elmasry writes stories about life in America. More Health News. For centuries, the only easily available disinfectant for splashing around was vinegar. It was ordering, tidying, dusting, polishing, rooting out bad smells, scenting, weekly laundry of linens and washing of hands and face that maintained the wholesome house and person. Disguising muck was routine. But observers still knew filth when they smelt it. It seems strange that a people so keen on cleanliness were so unwilling to wash in water.
Since the great plagues and the closing of public bathhouses, western Europeans believed that bathing was positively bad for you. Skin protected the body from putrefaction and disease. Toxins left the body as perspiration, menstrual blood, urine and faeces.
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