Tag: handwashing
-
Can behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia salvage Semmelweis?
Faraze A. NiaziJack E. RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States Remember me for the mind I had; not the mind a disease created. Few physicians have made a more significant observation than did Ignaz Semmelweis.1 In 1847 he took over two obstetric divisions at the Vienna General Hospital. In Division 1, where babies were delivered by…
-
Washing our hands
Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Ever since Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, washed his hands before condemning Jesus Christ to death by crucifixion, this simple act of personal sanitation has been used as the figurative icon of a disclaimer, the denial of responsibility. Today, in the climate of the current COVID-19 pandemic, handwashing is not…
-
Lajos Markusovszky: Semmelweis’s best friend
Constance PutnamConcord, Massachusetts, United States The name “Ignaz Semmelweis” is at least vaguely familiar to many people, even if they need reminding that he was “the hand-washing guy.” He was the first fully to grasp why so many apparently healthy women died in childbirth. His hypothesis (which he supported with elaborate if sometimes-flawed statistics) was…