Simpson however faced bitter opposition, critics argued that chloroform caused higher death rates for mothers and children. Another one of his opponent’s arguments was ‘religious views’. They came upon the fact that the bible clearly indicated that childbirth should be, and always has been painful. But by Simpson’s ability to produce true and clever arguments, he was able to establish chloroform as the standard, general anesthetic for the next 50 years.
A major part in the production and acception of his role was probably due to the support of great and powerful people, such as Queen Victoria who asked to be given chloroform for the birth of her eighth child.
In the long term Simpsons discovery made little change, as his use of chloroform was only used up until around 1900 due to the fact that chloroform had been discovered to damage the liver. From this point and onwards surgeons began to resort to the old methods of using ether before the introduction of newer anesthetics.
The work of Simpson was not at the time the biggest succession, but in fact lead to later changes and discoveries that did play a huge role in future medicine and surgery.
Like Jenner, Simpson was by no means the first person to discover chloroform as a drug; a French scientist discovered it as a treatment for hysteria and athsma. Simpson was just first person to use the drug as an anesthetic, so perhaps he received more credit than he arterially deserved. What Simpson’s discovery achieved in terms of helping with medicine, was only the succession in the numbing of pain during operations and childbirth. Simpsons work played no part in helping with thriving diseases such as Pydemia.
But when taking all of Simpson’s work into account he helped spread and develop medical knowledge, his discovery also lead to surgeons being able to carry out far more ambitious and technical operations. But again as I said before Simpson, just as Jenner did took the credit for someone else’s work, then like inoculation and vaccination it wasn’t long before Simpson’s work and discovery was replaced by something safer and far more efficient. He was only one in a list of developers who experimented with substances to reduce pain.
Louis Pasteur was the scientist who developed the germ theory. He made the first link between germs and disease. Pasteur did not set out with intention of doing this, but in fact had been hired to find out why the process of fermination to make alcohol was going wrong. He discovered that there were large amounts of harmful microorganisms in the vats, and by doing so, he proved that these microbes were the cause of decay, and that they traveled through air. Later Pasteur embarked upon, and developed the process of pasteurization, which is in fact the destruction of germs in liquids through a process of slow heating. He also went on to produce immunization against several deadly diseases such as anthrax, rabies and chicken cholera.
Although a lot of people still clung to the old spontaneous generation theory, other doctors and scientists saw he had made a definite and conclusive link between germs and decay. Pasteur’s new theory meant that ways, in which both the public and food could be protected, could also be improved to a vast extent.
In the short term Pasteur’s work succeeded in saving and improving the lives of many people. His work on vaccination lead to the destruction of the most aggressive and probably most deadly diseases of that time. His work on Pasteurization, being still in use today clearly shows that as well as in the short term, in the long term saved many lives, and being used on milk, reducing the amount of glandular tuberculosis cases.
Another process still upheld today is Pasteur’s ‘germ theory’ of disease. But although Pasteur took the first step, he was not a doctor and as an individual did not prove that germs were the cause of disease in humans. It was in fact Robert Koch who completed the work and established the germ theory of disease by managing to identify germs, which were the cause of some of the human diseases.
Pasteur’s work also proved vitally important in the development of antiseptics by Joseph Lister, however Pasteur was not the first to discover the theory. Two men called Hieonymus Fracasforius (1483-1553) and Jacob Henley (1809-95) both came out with similar discovery’s which concerned the role of germs and disease, and their presence in air.
Although these people came out with similar ideas to the ones of Pasteur, it is still him that is remembered. This is on account of the time he was living in, and by this I mean that he was able to spread and publicize his work because of the amount of people in that time willing to listen to new discoveries.
Pasteur’s work formed the foundations for the Science of microbiology. Despite it not being his own work but rather his production of previous discoveries, which were then carried on by the elaboration of others, that have led to our public recognition of germs in our current day. So when taking this all into account I can say with much certainty that Pasteur’s work was very important, I believe that he must be given credit and acknowledgment for his ability to develop, use, experiment and publicize the work of previous developers to benefit and increase the amount of medical knowledge.
During the early 19th Century hospitals were dirty, damp and basically, ‘Unhygienic’. They were places for the poor who couldn’t afford home care when they were ill. Few effective medical treatments were available and nurses were untrained and of low repute. This meant that death rates were high, many people didn’t see the need to have clean wards with caring nurses.
This is where Florence Nightingale came in, she was the women that largely turned all of this around. Through struggling hard with her rich and well respected family she convinced them to let her go off to a military hospital during the Crimean war. It was there where she earned her fame by succeeding in reducing the death rate from 42% to a sheer 2%. On her return she received a large sum of money, by which she founded the Nightingale School for Nurses, she also published the best selling, ‘Notes on Nursing’. Her ideas spread furiously, influencing the planning of hospitals pavilion style and the caring of the sick. Her work also lead to the increase of more people willing to take up the profession of nursing, I fact having nursing classed as a profession at all, all of this accomplished a dramatic decrease in death rates.
Nightingale’s developments resulted in every major hospital proceeding to set up a training school using her ideas. In fact some of her ideas are still in use today. Due to Nightingales great success in improving the British hospital systems, her work inspired the likes of Henri Dunant, the founder of the ‘Red Cross’, he quoted, ‘it is to an English woman that all the honor of that convention is due. What inspired me was the work of Miss Florence Nightingale in Crimea’.
Throughout the Crimean war, Nightingale played the important role of being a cogent hospital reformer and humanitarian. She was a powerful advocate for the soldiers, who was totally dedicated and had total understanding of all the medical procedures undertaken.
Although Nightingales work was all very important to the improvement in medicine, it was still all very predictable and would have happened anyway. During the 18th and 19th Century’s there had already been a series of general improvements made towards hospital care. For example on the continent the training of nurses had began, so in fact Nightingale was not the only person to benefit the profession of nursing. Known as, ‘Mother Seacole’ a woman called Mary Seacole also traveled to the Crimean war. She walked amongst the wounded on the battlefield and nurtured them to health. But on her return she received no heroines welcome. Unlike Nightingale she went bankrupt and her nursing skills were overlooked. In contrast to Nightingale she had no upper class background, she had a darker skin tone which ment she was stifle and ridiculed by the public. Her success was distorted by her lack of acceptance and the way in which she came across as a so-called, ‘Black person’ living in amongst the white, racist people of that time.
Nightingale was important herself, but she was only part of an on going reform in hospital conditions. What she achieved would only of happened anyway, just in a different time and by a different person. Her importance came from her fortunate position in society, her contacts and her determination as a character to get things done and publish for others to follow.
As history tells, we are believed to have understood that Alexander Fleming was the first to discover Penicillin, yet in fact this is not entirely true, as it was Sanderson who first embarked upon this discovery in the early 19th Century. Fleming played the small part of this discovery in finding the properties of the drug. In 1928, when trying to find a cure for microbe infections which earlier killed his fellow officers during the war, Fleming by chance rediscovered Penicillin. He noticed that when looking at a plate containing bacteria there seemed to be an area of mould where they had all been killed. These results were the ones of Penicillin, and having the ability to destroy bacteria meant that this process could be used in the body to kill infectious bacteria.
Fleming later published a report of his discovery, but due to the scarcity of public interest his findings were taken with little enthusiasm. But this time things did not stop at this point, add they had done in Sanderson’s case. Two scientists, Florey and Chain read Flemings articles and realized the importance of it, and by doing so, developed the idea. They were helped by a team of researchers at Oxford University. They tested the Penicillin on mice but found it difficult to produce large quantities. Florey asked for help from British drug manufacturers, they managed to get enough for a human trial. There were 2 things which then helped the development of mass producing penicillin which were not present before: 1. The growth of large drug manufacturing companies and 2. The Second World War.
It was only in the on coming of the war that the government began to acknowledge the need for the drug, and by doing so, funded the mass production of the drug to be used to cure infections amongst the ever rising injured soldiers. From this moment in time and onwards penicillin has been used to treat infections all across the world.
Despite the work of Florey and Chain, Fleming received the praise, publicity, and enrichment for the discovery of penicillin. Florey and Chain were just merely said to have, ‘Made it tick’. Some doctors and scientists who were admirers of Florey have argued that this gives a distorted view of History. In 1945 when they were awarded with the noble prize, it was Fleming who received all the credit, but really he was only part of the story.
Also due to the development in science, research and technology and the increasing demand for new medicines because of the war, penicillin would probably have been discovered anyway, by this I am implying that that if Fleming could just come across it by chance then it is more than likely that so could many others.
In terms of being important, fleming was not important in that he set out to research a particular idea, instead he came across something which happened by luck, but something which in the circumstances led to huge medical advance in making a drug which has prevented thousands of deaths since the 1940s.
Through looking at and taking into account the work of all the 5 people who helped along the development of medicine, I believe that the work of Pasteur is by all means the most important. He was able to produce one of the most productive and important theory’s ever made; the germ theory of disease. Pasteur’s hypothesis that air borne germs cause decay could be applied to almost every different section in the line of medicine. The application of this understanding helped the reform of hospital care, proving that it was when wounds were left disclosed, they were more susceptible to germs. From this I can imply that Pasteur’s work was consequently more substantial than that of Nightingale, who was in some respects holding back the development of hospital care due to her supporting of the old spontaneous generation theory. In duration to Pasteur’s work many other developers such as the likes of Koch, the scientist who expanded on Pasteur’s work and by doing so managed to classify some of the germs that caused human diseases. Like Nightingale and Fleming who were both helped and motivated by the effects of war, I believe that Pasteur was too, encouraged to develop his work based on Jenner’s previously discovered vaccinations for chicken cholera, anthrax and rabies, because of his ever increasing wish to discover them before such enemies as the German scientist Koch. Correspondingly Pasteur invented the process of pasteurization
which enabled him to remove bacteria from substances such as milk. Due to its ability to produce safer, disease free products this procedure is still in use today.
Unlike Pasteur who assembled and constructed all of his own ideas. The findings of Jenner, Simpson, and Fleming were all contrived from the work of previous discoveries made by other people. Then the accomplishment of both Fleming and Nightingale was all down to luck. The reality of war was very fundamental to the basis of their work.
I also think that Nightingale’s superior background meant that she had appropriate contacts of a higher status which were able to assist her, and also the fact that she was working with the lower class meant that she gathered a lot of respect and public attention. I mean whatever the circumstances it was rare at that time to see both the lower and higher classes mix together on their own accord.
As with many other historical figures all of them excluding Pasteur (who had found himself being overshadowed by Koch) have had their inspiration on medical advancement overwrought because of their social positions.
But when looking back on the work of all 5 people I can quite positively say that this is wrong as Pasteur’s work was, and still is, the most important overall. His work is still in use today and probably will be for a long time to come, so therefore I will conclude that his work is both triumphant in the short term and the long.
