Septic subjects: infection control and occupational illness in British hospitals, c. 1870-1970 (2021)
Jones, Claire L. (Author)
Manchester University Press
Pages: 104-146
Publication date: 2021
Language: English
This chapter examines how doctors, nurses and other hospital staff, groups often overlooked in favour of patients, experienced septic finger, wound sepsis and related diseases within the British hospital between 1870 and 1970. The focus on sepsis, as opposed to other types of infection, is significant. Hospital staff were, of course, at risk of contracting all manner of diseases. Yet, widespread concern over sepsis and hospital attempts at prevention and control of sepsis in pre- and post-operative wounds form an often neglected part of the story and span this hundred-year period, as well as recent history with rising antibiotic resistance and hospital mismanagement of infections. While other infections tend to fit more neatly into epidemic periodic cycles, wound sepsis was and still is a continual chronic challenge, one that becomes more important following a serious outbreak or death. Drawing on hospital ledgers and reports, this chapter pays particular attention to occurrences of wound sepsis among staff at four of Britain’s large teaching hospitals, two in England – King’s College (KCH) and St Thomas’ – and two in Scotland – the Royal Infirmaries in Edinburgh (RIE) and Glasgow (GRI). (Publisher)
...MoreBook Anne Marie Rafferty; Marguerite Dupree; Fay Bound Alberti (2021) Germs and governance: The past, present and future of hospital infection, prevention and control.
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