In the 1860's, which was the era of Civil War, the germ theory gained a scientific proof, but the concept was in its infancy. In 1847, an Obstetrician-Gynecologist Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that handwashing was the key to prevent death in surgery as he noticed physicians and students were "transferring cadaveric particles to patients in labor", leading to an 18% death rate, but with his discovery, death rate plummeted to less than 2%. Despite his extraordinary evidence, the medical community ridiculed him, and because of a betrayal of a fellow friend, he was sent to mental asylum and got beat up there, leading to his death from puerperal fever (sepsis), which was the disease that most mothers died from before his discovery. It was not until 1870's when surgery and medicine took a turn. Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, used phenol to clean off wounds after surgery, although many surgeons did not like his idea, but the low death rate spoke for itself. One of the founders of Johns Hopkins Medical School and a Cocaine Addict Dr. William Halstead in 1890's, his scrub nurse (who later became his wife) was suffering from dermatitis while using mercuric chloride for handwashing, which he later commissioned with Goodyear Rubber to create gloves. His student Joseph Bloodgood realized it was useful as it lowered the infection rate, which he began to wear for every surgery. Mercury, or Calomel, was one of the main treatments for constipation, and it was also used for treating syphilis. There was a physician who saw how this drug did to his patients, and how some of those related drugs and surgery, like arsenic and bloodletting, had actually done to his family where three of his children died in front of him along with his adopted child. This physician was Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, father of Osteopathic Medicine. There were many anesthetics that were being discovered, one of them was cocaine until physicians realized its addictive property.
