Medicine is getting better through time as there were many discoveries such as the smallpox and Pasteur’s germ theory, but just because medicine was improving it doesn’t mean that health was improving. Health, hygiene and medicine are very important but in the 19th century health wasn’t that important as people didn’t know that pollution and germs caused infections and diseases. I disagree that the 19th century saw improvements in health as the population kept on increasing and houses were built closer together, this caused people and places to become more crowded.
Conditions in the countryside were becoming as bad as in the towns. Bad water supplies, inadequate drains, damp houses, over crowding, and indifference to rubbish all helped to spread disease. Diarrhoea, typhus and the dreaded typhoid and cholera sometimes ravaged cottages as severely as they did the slums of the city. Towns were in very bad conditions as filth of every kind was scattered about or heaped up against the walls, pigs, cows and horses were lodged under the same roof of their owners.
In Liverpool the average age of death was 35 for an upper class, and in the rural areas it was 52 in 1840. For the middle-class in Liverpool the average age were 22 and in rural areas 41. The third class average in Liverpool is 15 and in rural areas it was 38. This shows that in towns the death rates are higher than in the countryside as towns are filthier and over crowded. So health did not see great improvements. Even if I disagree that the 19th century didn’t see many improvement in health, I do agree that the 19th century saw improvements in medicine.
It started with the discovery of the smallpox vaccination. Edward Jenner discovered this discovery. People were given a small dose of the smallpox, some people died of this mild dose that they were given. Others became carriers of the disease and could pass it on to other people they came into contact. Therefore people refused the treatment. Edward Jenner was a doctor in Gloucestershire. Jenner was puzzled to find that many people refused the vaccination. Then he discovered from local farmers that believed they could not catch smallpox if they already had a milder disease called cowpox.
He examined this idea and wondered whether he could use the idea of cowpox as a method of preventing smallpox. He tried his ideas and experiments 23 times by inoculating the cowpox instead of the smallpox scabs. It worked, as when he inoculated testers with smallpox, they never became ill. It took several years for people to trust Jenner’s Idea, but his book was widely read and the parliament thought that his work was very significant. Jenner was given 30,000 pounds to open up a Vaccination clinic in London. Jenner’s discovery was made possible by science and the government.
Another great discovery was Louis Pasteur’s germ theory. His discovery was made possible by technology and science. A man in the late 1600s made some of the earliest microscopes. He patiently used then to study every thing, food, water ect. To his amazement he found organisms, he called them animal cules. He described his findings to the Royals society in London. In the 1830s Joseph Lister, developed a microscope that magnified 1,000 times without distortion. Then a scientist called Louis Pasteur was interested I microorganisms.
He was asked to help a brewing company because their vats of alcohol were going bad. He then discovered that microorganisms were growing in the liquids. He developed the theory of germs. He solved the problem, showing him germs are killed at a boiling point. It happened again, a disease was affecting silkworm rapidly. Pasteur was called in to investigate Here again he found that a particular microorganism seemed to be causing the silkworm disease. It was a German doctor, Robert Koch, took up the challenge of applying Pasteur’s ideas to human diseases.
Koch realised that bacteria, germs could be seen better through the microscope if it was stained. Koch studied anthrax, a disease that affects animals and humans. He also discovered that specific germs cause specific diseases. Medical Knowledge was advancing rapidly and some surgeons felt that if the patient could be “knocked out” there would be no resistance. During the same period, chemistry was developing and scientists were finding that certain chemicals would have an affect on the human body.
In 1799 Sir Humphrey Davy discovered the laughing gas, and that it reduced the sensation of pain. A few years’ later dentists used it to soothe the pain of teeth. In 1846 John Collins tried ether for an anaesthetic. Another surgeon in London to anaesthetise a patient during a leg amputation used a ether a later year. It irritated the lungs, causing the patient to cough during the operation. Soon surgeons were searching for a better alternative. In 1847 James Simpson found chloroform. He started using it to help relieve pain during childbirth.
Some surgeons had medical arguments about chloroform, as it was an untested gas. No one knew if there would be side effects on the patient’s bodies. They didn’t know what doses to give to patients and chloroform killed one person in 1848. Anaesthetics made some cases worse as doctors could cut deeper into the patient’s body causing infection or causing more loss of blood. The number of people dying from surgery may even have increased after the discovery of anaesthetics. It may have been a bad idea to use anaesthetics, but it’s still a discovery, which has helped us here, in the future.
In the 1830s the poor law commission employed a civil servant called Edwin Chadwick to investigate the living conditions and health of the poor. He recommended proper drainage, the removal of all refuse from the streets and roads and the improvement of the supplies of water. The government wanted local councils to adopt his ideas but this would cost money, which meant that local taxes would have to be raised. Local councils therefore did not adopt Chadwick’s recommendations. They believed in the theory of Laissez Faire. Then in 1875 the government used the recommendations of Chadwick and made the Health act.
People had to be vaccinated; there was improved education, isolation hospitals for infectious diseases, improved food qualities sold in shops and Laws against pollution of rivers. The government realised that it was in everyone’s interest to force towns to clean up, this caused the Laissez faire to weaken. Medicine has improved through time, and health improved near the end of the 19th century. At the end all the discoveries made have helped us here In the future, the germ theory helped health. I really can’t imagine living in the 1800s, as life was difficult.