It became clear that disinfecting the gloves in this way and adhering to aseptic techniques in the operating theatre was a superior method. In 1890 William Stewart Halstead requested that the Goodyear Rubber Company make a pair of thin rubber gloves, initially with the intention that they protect his hands an those of his nurses from the caustic effects of the phenol disinfectant that was still being used. In the later decades of the 19 th and early 20 th centuries, sterilized surgical gowns and gloves became more commonplace. They also began to realize the downsides to the use of disinfectants, including the fact that they were highly poisonous, and their entry into a wound was often severely damaging. This led the medical community to stop relying solely on antiseptic techniques and emphasize asepsis as well. Robert Koch, through his work with anthrax and tuberculosis, demonstrated that particular diseases were the result of the presence of specific microorganisms within the body, and so strongly reinforced the work of Louis Pasteur and the idea of asepsis. Although this was effective, he failed to recognise the importance of asepsis at the time. He would sterilize the operating theatre and surgical tools with phenol, and even soak bandages in the substance before dressing wounds. Antisepsis or asepsis?Īntiseptic surgery was largely pioneered by Joseph Lister in the 1860s, when he used phenol (known at the time as carbolic acid) as a disinfectant. 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. Treatment of precancerous anal growths in HIV patients decreases the progression to anal cancer.New way to test vaccines may be as rigorous and stringent as exposure to field strains of malaria.Antibiotics have sex-specific effects on the gut microbiome, preclinical study finds.

Medical vs surgical asepsis