双语健康：关于洗手的“黑”历史

The History of Hand Washing

One of the best ways to prevent the spread of the flu and other viruses is to wash your hands.

预防流感和其他病毒传播的最好方法之一就是洗手。

Today, this may seem like common sense to many people. Yet it wasn't until the mid-19th century that some doctors in the United States and Europe began to wash their hands before examining patients — and even then, only in certain cases.

今天，对许多人来说，这似乎是常识。然而，直到19世纪中叶，美国和欧洲的一些医生才开始在检查病人之前洗手——即便如此，也只是在某些情况下。

An early proponent of hand washing was Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor who worked at the Vienna General Hospital between 1844 and 1848.

洗手的早期倡导者是Ignaz Semmelweis，他是一位匈牙利医生，1844年到1848年间在维也纳总医院工作。

Between 1840 and 1846, in the hospital's maternity wing, the maternal mortality rate for the midwives' ward was 36.2 per 1000 births, while the mortality rate for the doctors' ward was 98.4 per 1000 births. Specifically, the doctors' ward had a higher rate of "childbed fever," now known as streptococcal infection.

1840年至1846年期间，在医院的妇产科，助产士病房的产妇死亡率为每1000例分娩中有36.2例，而医生病房的产妇死亡率为每1000例分娩中有98.4例。具体来说，医生病房有更高的几率患“产褥热”，现在被称为链球菌感染。

Semmelweis started to look for any differences between the wards .Then in 1847, the death of Semmelweis' colleague Jakob Kolletschka led him to a breakthrough. Kolletschka had cut his finger on a scalpel during an autopsy, and developed an infection that killed him.

Semmelweis开始寻找病房之间的差异。然后在1847年，Semmelweis的同事Jakob Kolletschka的去世使得他的研究取得了突破性进展。在一次尸检中，Kolletschka的手指被解剖刀割伤，然后感染致死。

Semmelweis realized that, unlike the hospital's midwives, doctors sometimes examined women in the maternity ward after performing autopsies. In the absence of germ theory, Semmelweis theorized that women in the doctors' ward might also be dying because cadaveric matter from doctors' hands was entering their body.

Semmelweis意识到，与医院的助产士不同，医生有时会在尸检后来到妇产科病房对妇女进行检查。在没有细菌理论的情况下，Semmelweis推测医生病房里的女性可能因为医生手上的尸体物质进入了她们的身体而死亡。

He started mandating that doctors wash their hands with chlorinated（含氯的） lime after autopsies. And it was a big improvement — between 1848 and 1859, the maternal mortality rate in the doctors' ward dropped to around the same level as the midwives' ward.

他开始要求医生在验尸后用氯化石灰洗手。这是一个很大的进步——在1848年至1859年期间，医生病房的孕产妇死亡率下降到与助产士病房大致相同的水平。

Still, the importance of hand washing for medical professionals didn't really become understood until scientists hit upon germ theory — the idea that certain diseases and infections are caused by microorganisms we can't even see.

尽管如此，直到科学家们偶然发现了细菌理论——某些疾病和感染甚至是由我们看不见的微生物引起的——人们才真正理解了洗手对医学专业人士的重要性。

In particular, the British surgeon Joseph Lister drastically improved patient mortality by advocating that surgeons wash their hands and sterilize their instruments in between patients.

特别值得一提的是，英国外科医生Joseph Lister倡导外科医生在治疗不同病人之间要洗手和消毒器械，从而大大改善了病人的死亡率。

Today, medical and health professionals consider hand washing a critical hygienic practice, both for themselves and their patients.

今天，医疗卫生专业人员认为洗手是一项重要的卫生措施，对他们自己和他们的病人都是如此。

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, even provides guidelines for how to properly wash your hands. To properly kill germs, the CDC advocates scrubbing them with soap for at least 20 seconds before rinsing the soap off with water. Drying them completely is also important, since wet hands spread germs more easily.

美国疾控中心（CDC）甚至为如何正确洗手提供了指南。为了正确杀死细菌，CDC建议在用水冲洗肥皂泡之前，用肥皂擦洗双手至少20秒。完全晾干双手也很重要，因为湿手更容易传播细菌。

2025年8月29日于C338下白马河段