Making Medicine More Sanitary

scalpel-31123_960_720One of the problems that plagued medicine from yesteryear was that many patients would spread their germs to other patients. And it often wasn’t the patient’s fault, but the doctor’s! In actual fact, early surgeons used to use the same tools and rags from one operation on other patients, without proper sterilization. This would result in a tremendous amount of infection. So many times, while the surgery itself was successful, the resulting infection would kill the patient. Thankfully, today we are not in the same position.

Starting in the 1800’s, sterilization began gaining ground. People like Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch pioneered various sterilization processes which led to methods that are still in used today. And while sterilizing medical instruments is still done and is necessary, there are still other alternatives for helping to prevent the spread of infection.

Disposables are another great way to stop germs from spreading from patient to patient. Stored in a sterile container, these items are used once, and then thrown away, with all the germs they may now be in contact with. These disposables are widely available at places like

Finally, there comes understanding how infections spread, and the taking of common sense precautions against them. Knowing that surfaces frequently touched need to be frequently cleaned, not allowing tools to be reused without proper cleaning (hands too for that matter), and keeping patients isolated if they have something that is highly contagious all help to prevent infections from spreading and harming others.

Thanks to modern medicinal procedures, we now don’t have to worry as much about infections (at least not those encountered in hospitals and clinics).