HYGIENE AND SANITATION

1. HYGIENE AND SANITATION
Dr.T.V.Rao MD
(Basic Facts - India’s awakening)
The word hygiene comes from Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health, who was the daughter of
Aesculapius, the god of medicine. Sanitation means Use of measures designed to promote health
and prevent disease; development and establishment of conditions in the environment favourable
to health. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution (c.1750-1850) and the discovery of the germ
theory of disease in the second half of the nineteenth century. Hygiene and sanitation have been at
the forefront of the struggle against illness and disease. 2000 BC: Ancient Indo-Aryan water
purification. Sanskrit writings describe the purification of foul water by boiling and filtering.
460-377 BC: The "birth" of "Hygiene"? During the time of Greek physician Hippocrates, “hygiene”
became known as the branch of medicine dedicated to the "art of health," (as distinct from
therapeutics, the treatment of disease).200-100 BC: "It is more important to prevent illness than to
cure the illness when it has arisen" -from The Yellow Emperor’s Treatise on Internal Medicine
(Ancient China). Clean water was known to be important in disease prevention so wells were
covered, devices were used to filter water and the Chhii Shih (“sanitary police”) removed all animal
and human corpses from waterways and buried all bodies found on land During the early nineteenth
century, medical science was closer to the art of clever guessing than the practice of proven and
solid facts. The concept of the four humors, or the four principle body fluids, was still considered a
fact until the American Civil War. Previously, doctors would take a sick patient and assume that one
of his humors was out of balance – either blood, phlegm, yellow bile [choler], or black bile
[melancholy] – and so would take on the task of restoring balance to the patient's humors.
Today we are waking up in the political front with Prime Minister’s drive to the issues of Hygiene and
Sanitation as source to Health and Human progress. At any given Time we have so many number of
patients attending our Hospitals which however can be prevented by simple hygiene and sanitation
in the surroundings one lives. The thinking on health in relation to sanitation is known factors from
ancient ages, many times it is not just science taught alone if one follow the religious texts, many
religious teachings have hygiene has its teachings to awaken the citizen spiritually At the same time,
the growth of medicine depended on the corresponding emergence and spread of organised
religions. Christianity taught that the physical body had been corrupted after the expulsion of Adam
and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Yet it also taught that the body belonged to God and had to be
properly looked after. The emphasis on purity and cleanliness in the Torah and the Qur’an ensured
that personal care and hygiene were central to Judaism and Islam. By 400 CE, Jewish law refused to
acknowledge a community that lacked a doctor. During the 800s and 900s CE, Islamic cities such as
Baghdad and Cairo possessed the world’s most advanced hospitals, and Islamic scholars promoted
formal medicine by translating and expanding on Galen’s work. The matters on hygiene are
revolutionized with HAND WASHING, Just as Dr. Semmelweis had predicted, the disease was
conquered when obstetricians began washing their hands between deliveries. Puerperal fever was
eradicated with cleanliness. Likewise, surgical mortality became acceptable when surgeons began
washing their hands and using antiseptic techniques as urged by Dr. Joseph Lister. The scientific
tenets of bacteriology and microbiology introduced by Louis Pasteur were finally being applied to
obstetrics, medicine and surgery. .Although today’s medical professionals no longer blame disease
on spirits or divine wrath, there remain many groups whose illness might be blamed on lifestyle and
conduct our life in the surroundings we live. The engine behind the drive for hospital reform in the

2. mid-nineteenth century was Florence Nightingale. After her tremendously successful humanitarian
venture at the Scutari Barrack Hospital during the Crimean War, Nightingale was able to convince
the world of the necessity of improving hygiene and sanitation as well as having trained professional
nurses tending the sick in the hospital wards. According to medical historian Guy Williams, when she
arrived at Scutari "there were plenty of rats, lice and fleas, never forget we have plenty of these in
our Hospitals, A call to many of us to improve the basic matters, Miss Nightingale and her nurses,
who were allowed just one pint of water per person per day for washing and drinking and for making
tea, [yet]...the ladies' own personal circumstances were hardly hygienic." With hard work and
determination, she turned the situation around and by the time she returned to England, she had
become a national heroine. Consider that over 80 percent of diseases are associated with unhealthy
lifestyles and self-destructive behaviours and thus are subject to healthy alterations in behaviour.
Reconnecting medicine with these dimensions while maintaining the integrity of science is not
necessarily an easy undertaking. There are many ways to frame the spiritual, political and humanistic
qualities that have gone missing in modern healing and many approaches to restoring a richer
tapestry of human experience to medicine. India faces many challenges in the social and economic
front to improve the quality of many citizens as Less than a third of the country's 1.2 billion people
have access to sanitation and more than 186,000 children under five die every year from diarrhoeal
diseases caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation, according to the charity Water Aid. The United
Nations said in May half of the country's citizens defecate outside - putting people at risk of cholera,
diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A and typhoid. But Mr Modi, like Mahatma Gandhi, wants to change
things so not only those born to a low caste work to keep India clean, it means everybody’s role to
improve the Sanitation On Thursday, a holiday for Gandhi's birthday, Mr Modi launched the Swachh
Bharat Abhiyan, or Clean India Mission, to modernize sanitation within five years. I wish many youth
and intellectuals contribute their ideas to improve the Health of the Nation. Ref Medical History ---
Hygiene and Sanitation Miguel A. Faria, Jr., MD
Dr.T.V.Rao MD Professor of Microbiology Travancore Medical College Kollam Kerala India