My name is Kris Brown and I'm a graduate from Mount Gilead High School. I currently have no job but over the summer I worked as a lifeguard at the Mt. Gilead pool. In addition to being a lifeguard, I work at a farm down the road from me. I bail hay, straw, and do all sorts of chores in between. In high school, I played baseball, ran cross country, swam senior year and also ran track after being cut from baseball my senior year. I only got my varsity letter through swimming; I'm not very athletic. I enjoy gaming, climbing things, messing around with a guitar, sketching, painting, but mostly just being around friends.
In the essay "On Washing Hands" by Atul Gawande, my favorite passage reads as...
"Out of three thousand mothers who delivered babies at the hospital where Semmelweis worked, six hundred or more died of [Puerperal fever] each year--a horrifying 20 percent maternal death rate. Of mothers delivering at home, only 1 percent died. Semmelweiss concluded that doctors themselves were carrying the disease between patients, and he mandated that every doctor and nurse on his ward scrub with a nail brush and chlorine between patients. The puerperal death rate immediately fell to 1 percent--incontrovertible proof, it would seem, that he was right."
This to me happened to be the most interesting thing in the essay. It's crazy to think that the people hired to take care and cure the ill are partly to blame for their death rate. I never really thought even back then that this was such an issue, let alone as severe of one today. Obviously with the issue addressed, it's even more important to us that we keep our hands clean to stay free of germs, diseases, and viruses.
I also found this quote to be crazy. Its amazing how infections simply from the lack of washing hands can cause the deaths of so many innocent lives.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and Alex. People shouldn't get sick or even die from people who are supposed to help take care of you.
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