The Doctor Who Made Us Wash Our Hands

Maternal mortality rates were three times higher in clinics staffed by doctors compared to those run by midwives.

Medical students frequently moved directly from performing autopsies to conducting pelvic exams on expectant mothers.

Chlorinated lime handwashing dropped mortality rates from over eleven percent to approximately two percent in two years.

Nineteenth-century physicians rejected handwashing because they believed a gentleman's hands were inherently clean.

The Semmelweis reflex describes the automatic human tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts established beliefs.

Hospital death rates spiked immediately after the handwashing protocols were abandoned in eighteen fifty.