To what extent was the progress in the industrial age due to the role of the individual?

University Degree Subjects allied to Medicine

Samantha Canvin Mr. Mungles

10DA History

The Industrial Age.

To what extent was the progress in the industrial age due to the role of the individual?

Introduction

The industrial age was a time of great change over the whole of Europe. Scientific thinking and scientific methods were leading to new ways of looking at the world, industrial development and economic growth. This scientific thinking spread to the world of medicine, stimulating individuals to document and research medical knowledge which brought huge improvements to public health.

What caused people to be healthy of unhealthy in the industrial age?

There were many factors in the industrial age that caused people to be healthy, or unhealthy. Public health played a large role during this period. The industrial revolution caused massive population increases in factory towns and cities. Wages were very low and the factory owners built cheap back-to-back houses to cope with the thousands of people who moved from the country to work in the mills. The water supply was often communal wells, but waste removal systems were very rare. In these areas, public health actually regressed from the standard set by the renaissance, back to the medieval period with people throwing waste into the streets which often contaminated the water supply. On top of this, the factories and mills had very poor working conditions, with their by-products polluting the surrounding area. In 1848 and 1875, the government issued public health acts to make these slums healthier.

Due to the crowded conditions of the slums before the public health acts were passed. Infectious diseases like Smallpox and Influenza, along with diseases from contaminated food or water, such as Cholera, Tuberculosis and Typhoid became big killers with regular outbreaks throughout the industrial period. Cholera even overtook the Plague as the big killer. Epidemics on the scale of those experienced during the industrial age had not been witnessed before. The slums public health is almost identical to that of the early dark ages when compared. But now there were even more people living in close proximity.

For the general population. The beginning of the industrial age was a time of regression for health. The slum housing caused many health problems for these people, where before most would have been relatively healthy in the countryside. By the end of the industrial age, general health among the population would have improved once again.

What ideas did people have about the causes and treatments of illness and injuries in the industrial age?

Many new theories and treatments were discovered in the industrial period.

At the beginning of the age, the main theory for the causes of disease was that rotting materials gave off poisonous gasses that were swept around by the wind, this was called Miasma or bad air. For a long time. Scientists had known about micro-organisms. They thought that these micro-organisms were created by decaying matter, this theory was called ‘Spontaneous Generation’. In 1861 Louis Pasteur proved that the micro-organisms come from the air, falling onto the matter and causing it to decay. This was called ‘Germ theory’.

Thanks to the discovery of the germ theory. Forward thinkers such as Ignaz Semmelweiss and Joseph Lister began to make discoveries in hygiene. Semmelweiss discovered that if he and his nurses washed their hands then the death rate of his patients in the maternity ward would drop.

Lister thought that if infection came from outside the body, then he could find something that could kill the germs before they reached the wound. Lister found that if he used carbolic spray (which was normally used to treat sewage) to cover the room in a thin layer of acid, then the likely-hood of his patient dying from infection was almost nil. This state of total cleanliness would later be called ‘aseptic’.

Password

Confirm Password

I agree to the terms of service and privacy policy

Lady Montague introduced inoculation for smallpox in the 18th century. Inoculation consisted of spreading smallpox matter into an open cut in order to give the patient a mild dose of the virus, which would then prevent them from getting a full, more fatal dose. Due to the inoculations, deaths from smallpox in Maidstone dropped from 16.3% in the 1740s and early 50s, to just 1.3% in the late 1780s and the 90s, even though the total death rate actually increased! But the mild dose of smallpox given by the inoculation could still prove fatal, and some people that got the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

In the late 1790s Edward Jenner invented vaccination as a prevention of smallpox. Vaccination was very similar to inoculation, but instead of infecting the person with smallpox, Jenner used cowpox which was a very similar disease often caught by dairy maids. Jenner observed that dairy maids rarely caught smallpox, after investigating, the smallpox vaccination was the result. Even though the vaccination worked well, there was substantial opposition to its use. Many new medical ideas were opposed simply because they were new and not fully understood. But Jenner couldn’t even say why his vaccination worked. People couldn’t see how a disease that came from cows could protect against a disease that affected people. As Jenner couldn’t answer their questions, many people remained sceptical.

When chloroform was discovered to be an anaesthetic by James Simpson in 1847 it became very popular in use for surgery and child birth. Unfortunately some doctors didn’t know the correct dose to give and mistakes could easily be made, by either giving the patient too little thus not being affective, or too much which could prove fatal. The church also opposed the use of chloroform in child birth. Saying that the Bible dictated women should feel pain during child birth. So again we can see the more conservative people of the time (those reluctant to change and the church), putting up opposition to new progress in the field of medicine. Luckily, when Queen Victoria used chloroform during the birth of one of her children, she turned the tide in favour of the use of chloroform.

Who provided medical care in the industrial age?

Many of the healers in the industrial age were similar to those of several hundred years before, but with a few new additions:

Quack doctors were still present, offering cheap remedies that often wouldn’t work, but were more often than not all that the poorer classes could afford.

Surgeons and physicians were still practising, charging large amounts for their services.

There was though a new type of doctor. One that often treated those that couldn’t normally afford a physician, they were often less specialised than the surgeons or the physicians and serviced a wide area, but they were cheaper, if only just. These doctors would later become the GPs.

Chemists had replaced apothecaries and wise women. The Nurse had finally become a recognised profession and women in the home still took care of the day-to-day health of their family.

Dispensaries were a new invention. Often staffed by a chemist, nurse and young doctor. For a small subscription fee, people could come, get a diagnosis and a prescription. But the doctors there weren’t as highly trained as others and could often prescribe the wrong thing. Never the less Dispensaries became so popular that many turned into hospitals by the 20th century.

Thanks to the Printing press, quack doctors didn’t have to travel all over the country. They could simply put an add in the newspaper for a ‘Cure All’ medicine. Affordable, practical and had absolutely nothing in them that could cure you, in fact, they’d more likely kill you.

What caused diagnoses and treatments to remain the same or to change in the industrial age?

The industrial age was the age of individual. More than any other factor, it was the individuals that caused change in the industrial age.

Edward Jenner (1749-1823) was a doctor who worked in Gloucestershire in the village of Berkeley. He found that many people in his village refused to be inoculated from smallpox. When questioned, these people believed that they had suffered from a similar virus called cowpox and that this would stop them from catching the more fatal illness. On the 14th of May 1796, Jenner conducted an experiment where he scraped matter from a cowpox sore which was on the arm of a milkmaid, then spread the matter into two cuts on the arm of a young boy called James Phipps. On the 1st of July 1796 he did the same experiment on the same boy, but this time, with smallpox matter. The boy caught cowpox, but didn’t catch smallpox. Jenner repeated the experiment 23 times on different subjects and each time the result was the same. Finally, Jenner concluded that cowpox did make the sufferer immune to smallpox. He called his new treatment ‘vaccination’ which meant ‘from a cow’.

Although Jenner faced opposition at first to his vaccinations as he couldn’t explain how it worked. He was given a grant of £10,000 by the government in 1802 and a further £20,000 in 1806. Vaccination became free for infants in 1840 and finally became compulsory in Britain in 1853. By 1980 the World Health Assembly declared that smallpox was now extinct throughout the world.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was a French chemist. He was asked by a wine company to explain why some wines turned sour while it was being made. Pasteur discovered that there were germs floating in the air that caused liquids to go off. Pasteur then developed a method of killing the germs by boiling the wine, then letting it cool, this method was known as ‘pasteurisation’. He then set about proving that germs came from the air, and thus, could be prevented from entering the liquid in the first place. He sealed some liquid in an air tight jar, and left some of the same liquid open to the air. The liquid left open turned sour. After proving his germ theory with careful experiments, he then went on to help treat diseases. He knew of Jenner’s vaccination and Pasteur thought he could explain how it worked. He examined the blood of healthy people under the microscope and compared it with that of sick people. He discovered that sick people had many germs in their blood.

Pasteurisation is still used today to kill germs in dairy products. Pasteur went on to discover a vaccination for chicken pox, cholera, diphtheria, anthrax and rabies. Unfortunately not all of Pasteur’s ideas were accepted. He recommended boiling surgical instruments before an operation to kill the germs but many just ignored this advice. And was only accepted when aseptic surgery became common practice.

Pasteur was the first to discover the link between germs and disease. This led the way for others to follow, like Robert Koch. Pasteur made virtually the most important discovery about disease ever discovered so far.

Robert Koch (1843-1910) was a German scientist from Hanover. He read Pasteur’s work and in 1872 he began to research into the microbes that affected disease. In 1878 Koch discovered that microbes caused wounds to go septic. But his breakthrough came when he stained the microbes with dye thus enabling him to photograph them under a microscope. Due to this method he was able to study them more effectively and prove that each disease was caused by different germs. He identified the microbes that caused TB in 1882 and cholera 1883.

By 1900 he and his students had identified 21 germs that caused diseases. Koch’s assistant, Emil Behring, discovered the first antitoxin that could destroy the poison spread through the blood stream by bacteria. Koch’s research earned him the Nobel Prize in 1905.

James Young Simpson (1811-1870) was the son of a Scottish village baker. He trained to be a doctor and became Professor of Midwifery and Edinburgh University. Simpson wanted to stop the suffering of his patients during child birth, but disliked using ether, because of its side-effects. Simpson discovered chloroform as an anaesthetic with two of his assistants when trying to find an alternative to ether in 1847. Although there was some opposition from the church, when Queen Victoria used it during child birth, all opposition faded. Simpson is now hailed as the developer of anaesthetics.

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was born in Italy to wealthy English parents. Frustrated by the lack of opportunities for women, she went to Germany to train as a nurse against her parents wishes. In 1853 she worked in Middlesex Hospital during a cholera outbreak. In 1854 the Crimean War broke out. The Secretary at War asked her to go to the Crimea and to take charge of the hospital at Scutari in Turkey. She arrived with a team of 38 nurses to find the wounded lying on bare boards among piles of filth. The army doctors opposed Nightingale’s plans but despite this she transformed the hospital by improving sanitation, cleanliness and supplies. Within two years the death rate had fallen from 40% to 2%.

Nightingale used her reputation to set up a nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. By 1887 Nightingale’s nurses were working in Australia, Canada, India, Sri Lanka, Germany, Sweden and the USA. Their standards helped turn nursing into a respected profession. Nightingale played a vital role in reforming the way hospitals are run today and establishing the nursing profession.

Edwin Chadwick (1800-1890). A civil servant from Manchester. In 1842 he published his ‘ Report into the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain’. Which proved that life expectancy was much lower in towns than in the countryside. Chadwick’s ‘Report’ challenged the ‘laissez-faire’ (let it be) attitude prevalent at the time. Chadwick argued that it was possible for the government to improve people’s lives through reform. Partly due to pressure from Chadwick and partly due to fear of cholera, Parliament passed the firth British Public Health Act in 1848. Like many people of the time Chadwick believed disease was caused by air pollution. His ideas on cleaning up towns were a step in the right direction but his conclusions were far too general as they didn’t address the specific causes of disease. He was however the first major figure in public health and helped to make later reforms possible.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) was the first British woman to qualify as a doctor. In 1874 she established the London School of Medicine of Women. Her determination to break down the prejudice against women in the medical profession paved the way for other women. In 1876 an Act of Parliament was passed which permitted women to enter all of the medical professions.

Today, one of the leading hospitals in London is named after Anderson in tribute to her contribution to the medical profession. And her example led women all over the world to demand equal rights. The Suffragettes in the early 20th century argued that women as doctors could be trusted with lives, yet were excluded from the basic right to vote.

Joseph Lister (1827-1912) was Professor of Surgery at Glasgow University. Her was concerned with the number of patients dying from infection and blood poisoning after operations and set about trying to reduce this by improving the cleanliness of operations.

Lister read about Pasteur’s discovery of germs and decided that to prevent infection, he needed to ensure that the germs present in the air didn’t get into the wound. Lister conducted an experiment on an 11-year-old boy, who had been run over by a cart and had a fractured leg, leaving the bone exposed. Once Lister had cleaned the wound, he placed a dressing covered with carbolic acid over it. Lister knew that carbolic acid was used the disinfect drains and therefore thought that if may have the power for kill germs. The boy survived and did not suffer from and gangrene of infections.

Lister decided to develop his theory further by inventing a carbolic spray which could be used to spray the operating are. Lister also insisted that the operating theatre was kept clean, the surgeon wore clean clothes and the instruments were regularly disinfected.

Deaths from blood poisoning and gangrene were reduced and before he died, Lister’s services to medicine were recognised and he was awarded a knighthood. Today, the terms, ‘Before Lister’ and ‘After Lister’ are used to describe surgery.

John Snow (1813-1858). During the 1830s and 1840s when severe cholera epidemics threatened London, Snow had become interested in the cause and transmission of the disease. In 1849 he published a brief pamphlet ‘On the mode and communication of cholera’, suggesting that cholera is a contagious disease caused by poison that reproduces in the human body and is found in the vomitus and stools of cholera patients. He believed that the main, although not only, means of transmission was water contaminated with this poison. This differed from the commonly held theory that diseases were transmitted by inhalation of miasma. The pamphlet was largely ignored, being one of many hopeful theories that were trying to find the link between cholera and water. In 1854 through painstaking documentation of cholera cases and correlation of the comparative incidents of cholera among subscribers to the city’s two water companies, he showed that cholera occurred much more frequently in customers of the Southwark and Vauxhall water company. This company drew its water from the lower Thames where it had become contaminated with London sewage, whereas the other company obtained water from the upper Thames.

Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) was part of Robert Koch’s research team. Koch had shown that certain dyes sought out certain bacteria. Ehrlich spent hours staining bacteria and observing the effects of the dye. He working with Behring on diptheria and became interested by the way the body created antibodies which killed the bacteria but did not harm anything else. He was convinced that a chemical could be found that might do the same, and set out to find one. In 1905 he was looking for this ‘magic bullet’ to treat syphilis. Instead of dyes he experimented with a variety of chemical compounds based on arsenic. Ehrlich tried 605 variations before he found one that worked. He very nearly missed the discovery that 606 worked, and it was only when it was being retested that another assistant Sahashiro Hato realised that it killed the syphilis bacteria. This compound was named Salvarsan, but it was difficult to use – it could kill not only the microbes causing the disease but the patient as well. Ehrlich’s discovery was important because it was the first chemical compound that had been discovered to kill bacteria.

How far did new ideas and treatments affect the majority of the population in the industrial age?

The improvements in public health benefited all of the population. Surgeons and physicians were still costly, but the new types of doctors were becoming more and more affordable. Theories such as the germ theory improved personal hygiene which raised the level of health for individuals. Treatments were beginning to lower infection rates after surgery through hygiene for doctors and hospitals. Vaccinations became compulsory by law which made a massive improvement in general health and lowered death rates dramatically.

Conclusion

The influence of science as the dominant form of research lead to individuals producing new theories on the cause of disease and ill health. These theories were tested and proved scientifically, with the help of new technology and equipment. It was thanks to a few dedicated individuals that new public health measures could be introduced to combat disease.