hey everybody dr. o here this video I want to talk about two historical figures that are very important in microbiology so we're gonna start here with Ignace Semmelweis and then we'll also cover Joseph Lister they were both doing similar things just in different arenas so Ignis Semmelweis he's he's credited with being the first position that believed that hand-washing would be important so let's just put this in historical context kid now we think about that as just absolutely ridiculous not to wash your hands but in this time it was believed that diseases were caused by imbalances between good and evil spirits and and the body's humors were critically important my asthma's like foul order odors and smells were the cause of disease you have to understand that he was way way way ahead of his time so much so that there's a little legend here it's hard to tell but at least once if not two or three times he was actually let go of his position and had to move on because he just wouldn't give up on this idea that washing hands was important so so he began in the 1840s to start washing his hands with chloride of lime which would be calcium hypochlorite kind of related to bleach so and he saw that prior to doing this you know people would be working on a dead body and then going to the liver baby and then up to 30% of the moms were getting this puerperal fever and we're not making it right so as the hospital was a super dangerous place to come and have a baby that's why midwives and doulas were so popular so when he started washing his hands with this chloride of lime he saw drastic reductions but but nobody really believed him so he really was ahead of his time but that's what I want you to know about him is crediting him with being the father of hand-washing if you want to call it that now there are some legends that said that he washed into his hands and some Merck mercuric or mercury based compounds which sort of ties into this because it is believed that he ended up in an insane asylum and ended up dying in an insane asylum so you wonder if something he was washing his hands with like potentially mercury could have led to some of that mercury is very neurotoxic I don't know I'm just kind of sharing some of the stories and legends that I've heard in this field so that's Ignace summarize so here I just have a picture of proper hand washing so you can certainly take a look at that but of course we now know how critically important it is so just imagine how how far ahead of his time with he was in the 1840s so the other to figure I want to talk about here so this would be this would be Joseph Lister so you may recognize his name from Listerine so Joseph Lister seeing what pastor had been up to at the germ theory of disease seeing that hand-washing had been affected at least in some case reports and then also seeing that they were using chemicals specifically carbolic acid which we now call phenol was being used I think they called it creosote but it was being used to treat sewage to get rid of the foul smell of sewage and obviously they thought foul smells were critically important so he decided what would happen if we use it on wounds directly so Joseph Lister is giving credit for the first person developing a septic surgery practices if you want to call it that so so we had seen how well it worked controlling sewage so he tried this carbolic acid this phenol it on wounds directly so here I have an actual a picture of him this would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 1865 that machine right there the middle the picture it's called the carbolic steam spray so he was using carbolic acid and using it in his surgical suites so Joseph Lister is credited with creating these antiseptic surgical techniques again think about the time the 1860s we're looking at the Civil War area I think about like a battlefield surgeon in the Civil War he would amputate someone's limb rub the rub the blood off of his blade onto his boot and then go to the next right you were you were just as likely to die actually every war up to I believe World War one you were more likely to die from infection than you were from actual battlefield wounds so think about part of the reason why how easily things are being spread all right so that is Ignace Semmelweis who is credited with being the father of hand-washing as an important clinical practice and Joseph Lister who moved those same types of techniques into the surgical suite all right have a wonderful day be blessed