Enlightenment

• People opposed Jenner's work because:

  • They thought it was wrong to give people an animals disease
  • It interfered with god's plan
  • Doctors lost money when the government offered vaccination for free
  • Some doctors didn't vaccinate people properly so it didn't work
• Louis Pasteur 


  5 Facts:

  • In 1860, be responded to the challenge of the French academy of science to disprove spontaneous generation
  • He studied microbes in alcohol first
  • Published germ theory in 1861
  • Later linked germs to illness and disease in 1878
  • Creates vaccine for animals (chicken cholera and anthrax)
• Pasteur was important because he disproved spontaneous generation and encouraged scientists to discover the germs that caused decay. This eventually led to the end of miasma.
• Robert Koch

  5 Facts:

  • Koch identified specific germs and bacteria that caused disease
  • Use of dye and Petri dish
  • Discovery of tuberculosis bacteria in 1882
  • Father of bacteriology/ Nobel prize for medicine in 1905
  • Also discovered the bacteria for cholera, tetanus and diphtheria
• Koch was important because he found concrete evidence that microbes caused disease by isolating the bacteria and injecting it into an animal to prove they'd get ill. His discovery of specific bacteria later meant that thinkers could create vaccines. This was the end of treating symptoms; now scientists looked for the underlying cause.
• James Simpson


  5 Facts;

  • Young surgeon from Edinburgh
  • At a dinner party with his friends and they inhaled chemicals to test their effects
  • 1847 - discovery of chloroform
  • First effective anaesthetic
  • 1853 - queen victoria uses it during childbirth
• Simpson had found a way to safely anaesthetise a patient and thus solve one of the surgical problems: pain.
• Joseph Lister


  5 Facts:

  • Gangrene and sepsis often killed patients who survived surgery
  • Read Pasteur's work and wanted to find a chemical that could remove germs
  • Carbolic acid was used in sewage treatments
  • In 1865, he tests it on a broken leg - the wound heals
  • Published it in The Lancet
• Lister found the first effective antiseptic to reduce the key surgical problem of infection.
• Edward Jenner


  5 Facts:

  • Smallpox epidemics - 1796 kills 3548 people
  • Jenner practices medicine at St George's hospital, London and was a GP in Gloucestershire
  • Tests theory on James Phipps in 1796 and publishes it himself in 1798
  • Napoleon has his entire army vaccinated
  • By 1803, 12,000 people vaccinated with cowpox
• Jenner developed the first vaccination, though he doesn't understand the science behind it. Prevention isn't just about avoiding the illness anymore.
• Florence Nightingale


  5 Facts:

  • 1853 - superintendent of nurses in kings college, London
  • Went to the Crimean war in 1854 with 38 nurses
  • Demanded 300 scrubbing brushes from government; clean bedding and meals provided
  • Mortality rate decreased from 40% to 2%
  • Became involved in new design for hospitals (Pavilion)
• The simple changes that Nightingale implemented began to be used in hospitals in Britain, meaning access to care improved by the end of the enlightenment.

  Nurses were better trained (notes on nursing) and hospitals were cleaner and well designed.
• Public health act, 1875


  5 Facts:

  • Cholera was spread by poor conditions in slums (20,097 deaths in 1854)
  • Inspired by Chadwick's report on living conditions in 1842
  • 1848 public health act encouraged cities to clean up but was not compulsory
  • By 1875, cities had to; provide clean water, dispose of sewage, ensure new homes were a better quality
• Public health act was important because it marked the beginning of the end of the laissez-faire attitude of governments. The government now took an active role in public health
• John snow


  5 Facts:

  • Cholera was deadly - 20,097 deaths in 1854
  • He wrote about cholera being spread in water in 1848
  • Soho outbreak of cholera in 1854
  • He plotted the 93 deaths on a map; water pump at the centre which was underneath sewage
  • Presented findings to parliament in 1855, but then took no action
• Snow had shown that there was a relationship between water supply and cholera, though he was unable to explain this scientifically.