It was found that a majority of deaths at these hospitals were entirely preventable through aseptic techniques, and the changes she implemented saved many lives during this period. Similarly, having noted the poor condition of hospitals where soldiers were placed during the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale collected extensive data regarding the number and cause of death of these soldiers over a two year period. The number of deaths due to infection on these maternity wards dropped dramatically following the implementation of this rule. He introduced hand washing procedures on these wards. In the 1840s, the Hungarian surgeon Ignaz Semmelweis noted that on maternity wards where doctors who also worked in other areas of the hospital were present, the mortality rates were significantly higher than on those wards that were operated by midwives only. Around this time, the development of anesthetics allowed surgeons to perform longer, more complex surgeries on patients, which also largely increased the risk of infection. In the mid-19 th century, Louis Pasteur performed several experiments demonstrating the validity of the germ theory and disproving the widely accepted idea of spontaneous generation. When was the importance of asepsis first recognized? While antisepsis is concerned with the removal of microorganisms immediately before, during, and after surgery or other work, asepsis is concerned with the maintenance of sterile conditions through good hygiene procedures. Prior to this, the importance of sterilizing an area was known, and antiseptics were used to clean locations, tools, and equipment that needed to be sterile, such as when performing surgery. Liji Thomas, MDĪseptic techniques were first widely adopted in the late 19 th century.
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