On Washing Hands

On Washing Hands was about the importance of washing your hands. The story took an inside look into hospitals and how the doctors could decrease the number of infections and sometimes deaths just from washing their hands. I found this story interesting because an act that is almost effortless, and takes no time at all can make all the difference in the world. "Out of three thousand mothers who delivered babies at the hospital where Semmelweis worked, six hundred or more died of the disease each year-a horrifying 20 percent maternal death. Of mothers delivering at home, only 1 percent died. Semmelweis concluded that doctors themselves were carrying the disease between patients, and he mandated that every doctor and nurse on his ward scrub with a nail brush and chlorine between patients." The statistics in this story are shocking and make you realize just how significant washing your hand really is.

I think that humans are creatures of habit, even if you know something is bad and want to change it's hard to do so. People usually only change when something happens to them personally, even with such shocking evidence why you should change or do something, if it doesn't affect you then why does it matter in their eyes.