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Today everyone knows to prevent the spread of coughs and colds, you should cover your mouth. Obviously doctors today treating patients with washing their hands and sterilising their medical instruments. But until the 19th century, nobody had made the connection between germs and disease. Before scientists well understood germs, people had believed that diseases were caused by bad smells, Gods punishment, or magic and for hundreds of years, doctors had used useless treatments like bleeding, trepanning, or praying. In medieval times, the Black Death killed a third of Europes population, because people hadnt known how to prevent the spread of the disease. In the 17th century, scientists had seen bacteria through microscopes, but they hadnt connected bacteria with disease. Many people also couldnt believe that these tiny germs were able to kill people. In the 18th century, due to Industrial Revolution and the growth of large crowded cities, living conditions and disease in Britain had got worse. In the 19th century, scientists, doctors and nurses began to understand germ theory that states germs could enter a healthy organism from outside and cause disease. In Victorian England a surgeon and a nurse managed to change beliefs and medical practices: Joseph Lister and Florence Nightingale. Joseph Lister, realised that germs could also enter wounds and cause patients to die. Nobody had made the connection before, and hygiene standards in hospitals improved after Lister made sure that doctors in his hospital had clean hands and instruments. In this way, Lister invented antiseptics. The number of patients who died after operations fell dramatically and surgeons all over the world copied his methods. Before Nightingale, an English nurse, hospitals had been dirty and chaotic, and nursing had been an inferior job, but she revolutionised peoples opinions and improved conditions. She is now known as the founder of modern nursing. ";