Life and Death -Vanessa M.

In the early 1800’s Dr.Bertha Van Hoosen realized many pregnant woman were getting sick. She discovered that the whole hospital had childbed fever  this fever occurred when the mother gave birth and a couple of days after the mother would eventually die (not every mother got it.)

Childbed fever is more criminal than crime. (53)

Before discovering bacteria they made many examinations and autopsies on dead mothers. Since they did not know what was the cause of childbed they decided to keep good hygiene by making sure the students washed their hands to prevent it. Dr. Ignac Semmelweis had realized that maybe the doctors were carrying infections after performing autopsies and into the mother when delivering a baby. He endorsed a rule that claimed doctors had to scrub with chlorine after the autopsies. This rule decreased the mortality rate from 20% to 1.3%. Today hospitals make sure that the doctors keep good hygiene in order to keep the patient healthy.

Around 1885 a New York doctor said that there were five types of childbed fever and one of them caused the germ. He claimed that constipation or hard breasts could cause sickness as well. The book explains

Most doctors, in the early years of the germ discoveries, were not looking for single causes the way we do nowadays. (57)

Today doctors have improved their hand hygiene by having to wash t

heir hands frequently after and before being with a patient and they also use gloves to prevent germs. I read an article that explained how in 2002 the fourth leading cause of deaths was hospital-based infections. They explained how washing your hands could help prevent more deaths.

 

 

In 1862 an infectious disease called Cholera was discovered in two town in German which were Hamburg and Altona. Cholera is found in contaminated food or water. The book explains

Altona cleaned the water, filtering out the germ. Hamburg did not. More than 8,000 people died of cholera there. (58)

This shows that many people died because they were consuming contaminated water and they were not looking or being clean with their surroundings.

Overall doctors history has changes because they went from not looking for the reason the patients where in the hospital to making sure we wash our hands and they know how they got sick. Reading Get Me Out has taught me how doctors have improved their hygiene and how they are more curious to diagnose a patient nowadays.