When did health care workers first use chlorine solution to decontaminate hands?
Labarraque's chlorinated lime and soda solutions have been advocated since 1828 to prevent infection (called "contagious infection", presumed to be transmitted by "miasmas"), and to treat putrefaction of existing wounds, including septic wounds. In his 1828 work, Labarraque recommended that doctors breathe chlorine, wash their hands in chlorinated lime, and even sprinkle chlorinated lime about the patients' beds in cases of "contagious infection". In 1828, the contagion of infections was well known, even though the agency of the microbe was not discovered until more than half a century later.
When did health care workers first use chlorinated lime to decontaminate hands?
1828
Chlorine
Perhaps the most famous application of Labarraque's chlorine and chemical base solutions was in 1847, when Ignaz Semmelweis used chlorine-water (chlorine dissolved in pure water, which was cheaper than chlorinated lime solutions) to disinfect the hands of Austrian doctors, which Semmelweis noticed still carried the stench of decomposition from the dissection rooms to the patient examination rooms. Long before the germ theory of disease, Semmelweis theorized that "cadaveric particles" were transmitting decay from fresh medical cadavers to living patients, and he used the well-known "Labarraque's solutions" as the only known method to remove the smell of decay and tissue decomposition (which he found that soap did not). The solutions proved to be far more effective antiseptics than soap (Semmelweis was also aware of their greater efficacy, but not the reason), and this resulted in Semmelweis's celebrated success in stopping the transmission of childbed fever ("puerperal fever") in the maternity wards of Vienna General Hospital in Austria in 1847.
When did health care workers first use chlorine-water to decontaminate hands?
1847
Chlorine
Chlorine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine
Labarraque recommended health care workers breathe chlorine, wash their hands in chlorinated lime and even sprinkle chlorinated lime around the patients beds in case of "contagious infection" since 1828. In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis began using chlorine-water for disinfection purposes, which proved to be more effective and cheaper than chlorinated lime.