How did men survive this?

[Rev. Rye]

Had modern medicine been available, the death toll from the US' "Civil War" would have been significantly reduced. Most soldiers died from infection instead of just the wound.

And eventually it turned out that the vast majority of those casualties by infection could have been averted by one thing: hand washing.





(Remarkably, this is manages to be a lot more accurate a synopsis of Semmelweis' life than damn near every other biopic made around this time.)

Unfortunately, Semmelweis' success was thwarted by the fact that he couldn't actually explain why this hand-washing regimen worked. While Semmelweis' career languished (note: contrary to popular belief, he was only confined to the asylum in the last two weeks of his life, and he was actually showing signs of legitimate mental illness with possibilities ranging from exhaustion to Alzheimer's), biologists like Pasteur and Lister were busy trying to figure out exactly why that was. Fortunately, they eventually proved it. Sadly, it took until the last third of the 19th century.