A morning with Louis Pasteur: a short history of the “clean hands”

Abstract

<jats:p>Abstract: This article examines the story of Louis Pasteur from the point of view of a classic movie presented at the Weekly Seminars of the “Oswaldo Cruz Institute”, at the end of the 2017 activities. Although very old, the movie The Story of Louis Pasteur (Warner Bros., 1936) inspired spectators and gave rise to an energetic debate that led the authors to decide for publishing the comments of the Seminar Coordinator, the guest commentator and the audience. The movie communicates to the public the legacy of one of the greatest precursors of the public health history using also fictional characters. The article presents the reliable passages in Pasteur’s biography and the fictional ones, without disrespecting the production of the creators of cinematographic work. The major merit of the movie, one of the first steps towards the policy of scientific diffusion, is to disclose the importance of vaccines and hand hygiene to prevent infectious diseases. The authors argue that the film-maker impeccably captured the scientist’s tenacity in the relentless search for discoveries and Pasteur’s idea that only persistent work can lead to rewarding results, remembering that the context created by previous researchers enabled Pasteur to establish new paradigms. Finally, the authors cite movie passages illustrating realities that are still in force: (i) the inertial resistance of science to new paradigms, illustrated by the medical-scientific community opposing to simple practices proposition, such as washing hands and boiling instruments, and (ii) the excessive confidence, and even arrogance, of some specialists, instead of serenity and humility that arise from committed study and accumulated knowledge.</jats:p>

The Effect of Health Belief in Health Practices: An Example of Hand Hygiene in Nurses

“…Findings establishing that infectious diseases can be prevented by washing hands were introduced in modern medicine with the practices of Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister in the middle of the XIX century. Around the same time, Ignaz Semmelweis (1847) showed that patients could be contaminated by microorganisms from the hands of healthcare workers, which further increased the importance of hand hygiene (Riberio & Lima, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has once again revealed the importance of hand hygiene in reducing cross contamination and the spread of the disease-causing severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (WHO, 2020).…”