Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

by John Vaillant

The comparison of manufactured greenhouse gases to personal hygiene is not an arbitrary one. Both are closely tied to the Petrocene Age. The first time a Western doctor recognized the connection between handwashing and patient survival wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century. In 1847, the Vienna-based obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that births attended by midwives seemed to result in fewer infections than those attended by physicians. Wondering why this might be, Semmelweis observed that, while doctors in his hospital handled all manner of sick and septic patients, including cadavers, midwives focused solely on mothers and babies. Ruling out other possibilities, Semmelweis concluded that the doctors’ hands were the one consistent link between sick or dead patients and birthing mothers. Semmelweis broke this link by washing his hands in a systematic way before attending births. The incidence of infection dropped dramatically among his patients, and he made handwashing standard practice.