Great great grandfather Edvard Julius Abrahamsson died this day, July 24, in 1886.
He died at the young age (young at least by today's standards) of 54. He died of appendicitis. He did not go to the hospital in Boras. The family reports he exclaimed "I will not die with the knife in me". A mistaken thought? Maybe not.
People were quite afraid of the hospital and considered it as a last resort only. Antibiotics were years away and worse yet, not even handwashing was the accepted practice worldwide. The 20 second scrub (while singing Happy Birthday twice of course) which we believe and practice today wasn't always considered common sense. In the 1800's it was considered ridiculous and scandalous.
In the 1850's Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis worked in the Vienna General Hospital in Austria which had two maternity wards; one staffed by male doctors and the other by female midwives. Those attended by doctors or medical students died at twice the rate as those attended by the midwives. Intrigued, he noticed that doctors dissected cadavers with students in the morning and later delivered babies or preformed surgeries. They did not wash their hands. Publishing his findings, he was ridiculed.
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| Painter Robert Thom depicts Dr. Semmelweiss in the Vienne General Hospital overseeing doctors washing their hand before examining obstetric patients. PHOTOGRAPHY BY LOOK AND LEARN Bridgeman Images |
Germ theory, proposed by Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister, was still a few decades away. It was not until the 1870's that physicians began to scrub up before surgeries. Longer still for hand washing to become standard practice worldwide. Too late for great great grandpa Edvard Julius. Perhaps his decision then was indeed wise.
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| Great Great Grandfather Edvard Julius Abrahamsson Dec 25, 1834 - Jul 24, 1886 |
'Wash your Hands' was once controversial medical advice.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/handwashing-once-controversial-medical-advice
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