I’m sure many people were skeptical about this, like how people are now with vaccines. But how did this seemingly common knowledge spread around the world enough that people were convinced it was true?
In: Biology
It came before germs etc were understood.
So people then said- if I can see my hands are clean (after washing with soap and water), then they are clean.
And they thought ‘unclean’ lead to ill.
So this dude, [Ignaz Semmelweis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis) discovered that hand washing **seriously** improved outcomes and wrote a book on it back in 1861.
The medical community ridiculed him and rejected his finding causing him to have a nervous breakdown and they *had him commited to an asylum!!*
The guards there beat him and he died two weeks later from an infection that unironicly could have been prevented with hand washing.
There was an Hungarian/Austrian doctor who realised that he had less deaths of women giving birth when doctors washed their hands before treating them (after working in the morgue). He tried to convince the doctors to wash their hands (though he didn’t quite understand what they were carrying over from the morgue). He made quite a few enemies because doctors didn’t like to think they were responsible for the deaths. Here’s a link that tells his story: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-doctor-who-championed-hand-washing-and-saved-women-s-lives
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