For many years surgery remained a desperate last resort for the hopelessly ill. Surgeons knew nothing about germs. Without washing, they would don operating garb, usually an old coat caked with blood and pus from numerous operations. They would pick up the scalpel, wiped clean with an old rag after the last operation, and go to work. Half of those operated on died.
One pioneer after another stumbled on the correct sterile techniques. But each was scorned and humiliated by fellow doctors. Professor Samuel Semmelweis, for one, discovered that making doctors wash their hands could dramatically cut the death rate in maternity wards. Yet his colleagues opposed Semmelweis strenuously, and though he argued for handwashing throughout his life, he died without seeing his ideas take hold.
Why So Slow?
Why were doctors to slow to adopt sterile techniques? The answer is simple: germs had not yet been discovered. Doctors could not see - and reformers like Semmelweis could not give them - any reason why washing hands should make a difference.
Then Louis Pasteur discovered micro-organisms under his microscope. Sterile procedures began to make sense - they made war on germs. Even so, each reform, from rubber gloves to gauze masks, was accepted only grudgingly and with considerable opposition. It was as though doctors had a hard time remembering that something invisible could be so devastating. Fifty years of constant education and reform were necessary before "sterile techniques" became a routine part of surgery, and germs became "real" to most medical minds. |
