The Dark Origin Story Behind Hand Washing

Imagine dying for asking people to just wash their hands.

That’s what happened to Ignaz Semmelweis. He’s the reason you wash your hands (at least in the west). But his story isn’t a happy one, it’s one of the most tragic tales in medical history. In the 1840s, he worked at a hospital in Vienna where 1 out of every 10 women who came to give birth died from a mysterious illness called childbed fever.

But here’s the strange part: the death rate was dramatically different depending on which ward