History of Handwashing

Thought of one second and action of five seconds would have saved many emotions:

Do you know what's the worst pain in life, breaking ribs? losing an Olympic medal? losing World cup or property? If this is what you think is the most torturous, please hold on. It's nothing compared to the pain when a mother loses her kid, or a kid loses their mother. Mother & kids' bond is defined as the purest love in the world. No matter what, how many times they are divided love of a mother is whole. Thousands of kids & mothers were separated by death because of not following a straightforward rule, i.e.…, washing hands, and scientists took roughly 47 years to discover the same. Yes, you heard me right. Let me throw some light on the flu, which has separated mothers and kids.

 

Back in the 1800s:

Women were dying after childbirth at an alarming rate from a disease called Puerperal Fever, or Childbed Fever, a blood infection that could lead to sepsis—but no one knew why. Scientists and doctors have tried and tested many theories, but none of them worked. At least they were not able to control deaths. One of the doctors understood that it's because not washing hands or sterilizing hands before delivering babies has killed several mothers and kids.

What did doctors use to do?

They perform post-mortem in one part of the hospital. They leave to deliver the babies in the next hospital ward without cleaning their hands in between.

Once it was figured out, they asked doctors and medical staff to sterilize hands before delivering babies. Surprisingly death has drastically fallen from 18% to 1%.

 

In the 2020s:

7.9 billion people, 23.5 crore Covid cases & 48.14 lac authorized deaths would have been stopped by a simple rule of hand washing and wearing a face mask.

Washing hands, being tidy, maintaining distance is this what we are learning in the 2020s? Are we correcting our fundamentals in the 2020s? Whereas the mission of 2020 was to travel to Mars, introduce electric vehicles, flying cars, build artificial intelligence, blockchain technologies, and increase the economies.

Where exactly are we heading?

Washing hands, Oh Right….! Excuse me, is this the first time? No, this is not the first time our scientists or leaders have taught us about basic hygiene. In fact, this is the second time where we are inculcating the habit of tidiness and making basic hygiene a part of our life.

Yes, thought of one second to clean our hands and action of five seconds to wash our hands and wear a mask would have saved millions of emotions.

So, I urge all the readers to adopt basic hygiene, and if you already have one, I request you to spread the word. Irrespective of Covid or any other disease, basic hygiene should be part of our lives, and it should be inherited in upcoming generations to save lives.

Reference:

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088248/#:~:text=Puerperal%20fever%20was%20a%2 0devastating,abdominal%20pain%2C%20fever%20and%20debility.

 

https://www.britannica.com/science/puerperal-fever

 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20334354

 

http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/epidemiology/hanley/minimed/DiseaseMaryDobsonPuerperalFever.pdf

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w04gTXu1mHM–BBCReel

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50513/historical-horror-childbirth

 



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