You see it in every restaurant bathroom you go to: “Employees must wash their hands before returning to work.” I’ve even seen detailed instructions in bathrooms as to how to wash one’s hands properly! In 1546 Italian physician and scholar Girolamo Fracastoro first suggested that unseen “germs” were the cause of infectious diseases, and the idea that germs caused sickness. But they couldn’t “see” the germs, so it would be years later…
