Washing Hands- A Crime??!!

Greetings dear readers! Welcome back to "Cerebending"!! 

We are all proud to be Homo Sapiens and possess a kind of hauteur and hubris of being at the top of the food chain. The land,  forests, mountains, deserts,  sea, sky, moon, mars,  the ever pervasive universe belong to us, Homo Sapiens, don't they?  

Fun Fact: It doesn't. Earth belongs to a particular species but not to us. As a matter of fact, "our" bodies, don't belong to us. "What??!!! That's impossible!" you might say. 

Take a moment to guess who the proud owners of Earth are. The original and first inhabitants of our blue- green (cyano) planet. 

Hint: What is essential is always invisible to the eye.

[drumroll]It' s bacteria, our microscopic co-inhabitors. Cyanobacteria were the first organisms on our cyanoplanet. 

Most of you already know that there are 1000 times more bacteria on Earth than Homo Sapiens and ten times more bacteria in our bodies than cells i.e. the bacteria and cells in our body are present in a 10:1 ratio.

An infectious disease specialist once said, " Humans are nice-looking luggage to carry bacteria around the world."

Bacteria were first observed by the most distinguished textile business owner of human history, Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek in 1683. 

Bacteria can simultaneously be our best friend and our worst enemy. Probiotics that reside in our gut, especially our large intestine, help in digestion. They also support our immune system, control inflammation, breakdown and absorb medications, synthesize vitamin K and most of the water‐soluble B vitamins.

However, the nefarious side of maleovalent, pathogenic bacteria was not known until the late 19th century. Maladies were  initially thought to be caused by  imbalance between the four humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. It was later hypothesised that insidious miasmas (unhealthy emissions and vapours or bad odour) or a punishment for blasphemy were causative agents for diseases.   

Today, I am going to entrap you in a world full of superstitions, developing medicine, pride, rage and the gravest mistake of being blunt.

We are going to travel to  1846 Vienna  where childbirth was a process that was as life-taking as it was life-giving. The protagonist of our story is a crabby yet ingenious Hungarian obstetrician, Ignaz Semmelweis and he worked in the General Hospital in Vienna. 

The hospital had two maternity wards and the superstiton that was ubiquitous in Vienna was that the first maternity ward was cursed- the habitat of evil spirits. The mortality rate of the first ward was significantly higher as compared to the second ward. Women in labour would prefer to deliver without any aid on the streets rather than enter the wretched first ward- the cause of postpartum death. The women would suddenly develop puerperal or "childbed fever". 

Semmelweis was a junior at the hospital and often wondered why the first ward yielded such results- he was a man of science and not superstition. He put on his detective and scientific gloves, his scientific magnifying glass (microscope) and made a list of possibilities. Was it overcrowding? Was it the giving birth while lying on the sides as against to lying on the back? Was it due to the  ringing of the bell that the priest carried? 

Semmelweis grew impatient and furious. The answer was continually evading him. 

One fateful day in 1847, Semmelweis received bad tidings that his colleague had  passed away.  He was appalled to learn that the cause of his dear friend, Dr. Jacob Kolletschka's death was a mere cut by a scalpel that occurred while he was performing an autopsy.  He soon showed symptoms similar to those of the women in the "cursed ward" suffering from puerperal (febrile and septic).

An epiphany soon struck him. 

He finally unravelled the mystery! It was not Math, Science, History but it definitely started with the Big Bang :)

 It was a substance!!! He didn't know what the substance was but he knew that there definitely was a substance!!! The substance that caused his collegaue's death also caused postpartum death.. It was the cause of sepsissssssssssss!!!!!! Eureka!

In the first ward the deliveries were carried out by doctors who shuffled between clinic work and performing autopsies. Autopsies = dead body = .....(you know the answer but back in 1847, they didn't). Medicine was a largely unhygienic practice back then and since nobody knew about the pathogenic activity of bacteria, nobody believed in washing hands, especially doctors(the hands of such intellectual males of the 19th century are bound to be purer than twenty four carat gold).  In the second ward, the deliveries were aided by midwives who didn't have to perform autopises or engage in clinical work. Thus, no dead body = no .... = no sepsis  = no postpartum death. 

Ignaz Semmelweis had come up with a groundbreaking theory. The substances from the dead bodies were transferred to the maternity ward by the doctors, which eventually caused "childbirth fever" and death in the new mothers. Semmelweis had to eliminate this "cadaverous material." He insisted that medical students and surgeons should wash their hands with chlorinated water before entering the ward and guess what, the mortality rate in the first clinic fell by 90%!!!  He chose chlorine not because of its role as a disinfectant (nobody knew that germs cause diseases) but because it would do away with the foul odour (miasmas) of the doctor's cadaverous hands. 

Sounds like a happy ending? Unfortunately not. 

Semmelweis encountered the biggest challenge known to humans- Pathological hubris, which can be diagnosed in the simplest form as the ego of Homo sapiens. 

The doctors refused to believe that the cause of death was both iatrogenic and "cadaverous material." After all, diseases were caused by miasmas- foul and polluted air.

 Semmelweis was ridiculed and he soon lost his job. Nobody paid any heed to the statistics that were lying right in front of their eyes, screaming "PAY ATTENTION TO ME." This was partly because of Semmelweis' role in politics and his approach to spreading information and partly because.. well,  let's just say that he was neither diplomatic nor respectful and was perpetually grumpy! 

Imagine walking up to the senior researchers and doctors of the time and saying "Wash your cadaverous hands, you potato-heads. You are killing the women. Your theories are all flawed. Do what I tell you!!! " 

He was declared to be crazy. He couldn't deal with the rejection and became ANGRIER and suffered mental breakdown(Alzhiemer's/syphilis might have been a contributing factor).  He was eventually sent to the asylum where the guards beat him up. 

Ignaz Semmelweis eventually passed away in his cell due to sepsis of his wound. He was consumed by the bacteria that he was trying to eradicate and was infected by the same disease as his friend :  " the disease of the haunted and cursed first ward." The bacteria that made him also broke him down, quite literally. 

His theory was accepted later (no suprise) and Robert Koch followed by Louis Pasteur helped prove that germs and bacteria (not miasmas) cause diseases. 

Fun fact:

Before penicillin, arsphenamine was discovered and became the first modern antibiotic. It effectively treated syphilis and today we have well over 100 antibiotics. 

It is indeed hard to believe that people didn't know that bacteria caused diseases until less than 200 years ago. 

Next time you wash your hands, do take a moment to remember Ignaz Semmelweis and  his "criminal" act of washing hands :)

I hope you guys enjoyed reading!!

Until next time, 

Tanisha C.