Nowyn
That was part of the issue. The father of the idea that handwashing can lower people getting puerperal fever and even other infections Ignaz Semmelweis was practicing in the 1840s in Vienna and during that time doctors were already top of working society. Because there was no idea of the germ theory of disease until later he was basically saying that first the doctors were responsible for deaths that could rise to 18% child birthing women in hospitals and secondly that they were unclean people. As gentlemen latter was offensive as that class of people both didn’t have to get their hands dirty in the way “lower” classes had to and if they got dirty definitely didn’t keep them dirty. Ignaz’s theory why didn’t help as he thought their hands were dirty with cadaver or animal carcass matter and not with invisible microbes.
That is also where white-collar and blue-collar worker terms come from. White collar workers didn’t have to get so too dirty working that they couldn’t wear a white shirt and collar (which was a separate piece of garment until the early 20th century).
Even though doctors washing hands lowered the puerperal fever deaths to about 1% in the maternity ward of Ignaz’s hospital handwashing didn’t really become a thing in hospitals at that point. It needed many other people to get it through in 1850s and 1860s.
One of mine is also lupus. Thankfully it has mostly spared internal organs but it really likes skin and veins in addition to joints in my case, veins being the biggest problem. I also have EDS so the genetic lottery really didn’t like me. I joke with my friends that someone should tell my body that diseases are not Pokemons.
I call mine overeager and incompetent. It likes to attack everything but what it is supposed to attack. The running tally of autoimmune diseases is currently at 4. It is bad enough that I am eating medication that is used also in higher doses for chemotherapy. In other words, if I trusted my immune system I would have died long ago as it also doesn’t really function against infections either.
Can’t union members vote them on or off? I am not American but how I was taught is that unions are what members make them of. This works here but unions are also not for one job place but for job classes (academics, nurses, doctors and teachers unions are separate for example). This means that employee contracts are negotiated nationally with unions for different employers. It makes the system less likely to be abused.
That is actually a great way to teach kids these things. I was nine when my mom took me to her workplace as she was organizing strike monitors. I passively learned a lot. Admittedly between 59-69% of the workforce of my country belongs to unions so it is pretty much generally thought that unions are amazing. I have belonged to one if I was working in Finland either since I was 18 or 19. But that original experience with all the union work that goes behind the scenes is one of my foundational experiences.
I am crossing this divide now. I have secondary education but no university and I am working to get to med school now (In Finland it is a combined undergrad and med school). I think I can do it but I don’t really know how to study. I know how to learn but learning in schedule is the issue. I was too ill to go to university when I should have and I could have gone to easier courses I could have gone to without an entrance exam and done OK but I always wanted medicine. Or well, I not easier but easier to get into like maths. After I got better I ended up in aid work, and stopping that is really hard. But I still want to become a doctor so I am trying now in my thirties. Having what looks like undiagnosed ADHD that is now under investigation and crappy childhood might explain part of why I never became what people felt I should have but the fact that I never had to learn to study because I didn’t need to get through is up there.
I try to remember that our education does not mean anything for our value, but it seems hard when it comes to you.