From Epidemics to Cleanliness Philipp Osten describes the first plague epidemics in Europe as a turning point in history: Transcontinental trade routes made it possible for new pathogens to spread. Within a few years, a third of Europe‘s population died of the ’Black Plague’. As a result, property was redistributed. Because of the social changes that followed, the cultural historian Egon Friedell called 1348 ’the concept year of modern man’. It was only 300 years later that the port city of Venice set up a public health department in response to the plague spread by merchant ships. ’For the first time, doctors were publicly employed to identify, predict and contain disease,’ says the medical historian. The containment measures introduced at the time also gave rise to the common English term: passport. Originally, the health certificate for disease-free cargo and crew issued by northern In his keynote speech, Prof Dr Philipp Osten from the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine at the UKE traced the history from the ’Black Plague’ in the 14th century to Hamburg in the 1920s. This was the time when the concepts of hygiene had finally arrived in the general consciousness - and today‘s BODE Chemie was founded. Italian port doctors was called a ’passa porto’, the written permission to leave the port after a medical examination. In the centuries that followed, however, it was not common practice to do much more than isolate those who were actually or possibly ill - and burn their belongings. After all, the real cause of the plague was not known. For example villages in which an epidemic broke out were consistently sealed off. This is clearly illustrated by a drawing from 1682, which shows that the village of Niederzimmern (near Weimar) was surrounded by more than 30 military checkpoints. At that time - and in the centuries before - so-called ’plague saints’ were in demand. According to historian Prof Dr Philipp Osten, the Catholic Church recognizes a total of 29 saints who were invoked to pray for healing or protection from the disease. Fear of bacteria & disinfection The treatment of diseases such as plague, cholera and the like would only change once the idea of tiny, invisible germs as the cause of these diseases The Development of Infection Prevention and Control and Disinfection over the Course of History Our centenary is a good opportunity to look back - and to look forward at the same time. At the anniversary event on 16 January, we asked two experts from the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) to do just that in their keynote speeches. 1OO YEARS BODE CHEMIE 8
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