Ignaz Semmelweis is not a name many people have heard of, despite now being given the title of “saviour of mothers”.

Back in the 1800s when Semmelweis was working as a doctor in Vienna, death in and after childbirth was rampant. One of the common causes of this death was “childbed fever”.

This was a time in medicine when the established paradigm of disease was an imbalance of the basic “four humours” in the body. And the main treatment for disease? Bloodletting.

But Semmelweis noticed something interesting, something that ran counter to this idea.

At the Vienna hospital where he worked, there were two maternity clinics that worked on alternate days.

One clinic was largely made up of medical students, of which Semmelweis was involved, while the second clinic was largely made up of midwives.

Interestingly, the incidence of childbed fever differed between the two groups, with those seeing the medical students having double the incidences of death from the disease.

So why the difference?

Semmelweis discovered that the reason for this difference was that medical students were also working on cadavers. They were doing autopsies then coming in to inspect and assist the women giving birth.

While we are now accustomed to thinking of germs and bacteria, this wasn’t true back in the 1800s. At this stage there was no Louis Pasteur, there was no “germ theory”. And because of this, doctors saw no need in washing their hands.

So even though Semmelweis had no scientific way to explain it, he believed that there was some poison or “cadaveric” agent that was transmitted and that this was causing the disease.

Doctors Need To Wash Their Hands

The solution he proposed was for all medical care-givers to wash their hands with a chlorinated lime solution before examining a mother. And the result? The incidence of fatal childbed fever dropped from about 10% (it ranged between 5–30%) to about 1–2%.

I wish I could tell you that this lead to adulation and positive notoriety for Semmelweis, but it didn’t. Unfortunately, despite the results, Semmelweis’ ideas weren’t accepted by the medical establishment. And sadly, he died in a mental institution in 1865, many decades before his ideas became accepted.

Today, we live in a world where hygiene and cleanliness are accepted as important. There are cultural reasons for this, but we acknowledge their importance from a health and disease perspective.

Can we take cleanliness too far?

So what about when we look at something like OCD, with someone who has a compulsion for washing their hands?

Are they taking the message of people like Semmelweis and Pasteur and just becoming more dedicated? Or is their issue less about cleanliness and more about anxiety and obsession, and it ends up being counter productive?

Around the same time that Semmelweis was working, many discoveries about the connection between food and health were also being made.

Scientists were looking at why diseases like scurvy, pellagra, and rickets would appear when humans or animals were on a deprived diet, but when specific foods were added in, these conditions disappeared.

The Discovery Of Vitamins

It wasn’t until the early 1900s that specific vitamins were isolated. This was first done by Japanese scientist Umetaro Suzuki in 1910 (Thiamine or B1) and then Polish-born biochemist Casimir Funk in 1912 (Niacin or Vitamin B3).

And just like Semmelweis’ discovery was just the start, our understanding of the connection between food and health has greatly increased since the early 1900s. Our nutritional understanding is still in its complete infancy and there are many more questions than we have answers. But it has progressed greatly since the discovery of vitamins.  

From “helpful’ to “harmful”.

We now find ourselves in a time where people talk about the importance of food and eating to support our health. But just like the washing of hands, is there a point where this goes from “helpful” to “harmful”? I would say a resounding yes.

Far too many people are taking the “OCD model of cleanliness” and applying it to food. But rather than seeing this as a problem, they feel it is a positive.

That if something is healthy, then more of it must be even more healthy.

That an adherence to eating “clean” or “right” is beneficial in avoiding death and disease (like these things can actually be avoided).

Worse, this also happens at the level of society. Where individuals who are participating in this problematic behaviour are congratulated for being “good” or praised for having “willpower”.

We don’t praise someone who washed their hands to the point of bleeding for “cleanliness” but we see no problem with doing the equivalent for someone in respect to dieting, weight loss, and exercise.

Finding a path between the extremes.

There is a middle ground between these two extremes and it’s looking at the “why” behind someone’s behaviour. And maybe this is a question you want to be asking yourself, or that we need to be asking at the population level.

Is what someone is doing truly about health? And is it actually leading to better health in reality? Or is it coming from a place of disorder or compulsion? And despite appearing “healthy” on the surface, is it actually producing the opposite results?

So before you praise someone (or yourself) for dedication to the pursuit of “health” or “clean eating”, realise that there may something more problematic going on behind the scenes.

Getting Help On Your Recovery Journey

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I truly believe that you can reach a place where the eating disorder is a thing of the past and I want to help you get there. If you want to fully recover and drastically increase the quality of your life, I’d love to help.

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