To mark this day, I’m republishing this open-access article from Frontiers in Public Health titled The Little-Known History of Cleanliness and the Pioneers of Handwashing, published October 2022 in the Section on Infectious Diseases: Epidemology and Prevention.
It traces how doctors in the 1800s once resisted the now-obvious idea that washing hands could prevent deadly infections, and save lives. And how a few determined pioneers, often shunned by their peers, changed medicine forever.
Credit: Charing Cross Hospital: Stanley Boyd in the old operating theatre. Photograph, 1900. Wellcome Collection.
