C.1700-C.1900 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

• Industrial Revolution c1700-c1900


  • Many people moved from villages to towns
  • Towns grew rapidly
  • Population increased
  • Houses built quickly and badly
  • People had to share pipes, pumps, and outside shared toilets
  • Disease spread quickly
• People no longer believed that God or an imbalance of the four humours caused illness


  Miasma theory was becoming less popular
• Scientists could see microbes on decaying matter such as vegetables which led to the idea of 'spontaneous generation' – that decaying matter caused microbes rather than microbes caused decay
• Inoculation


  Expensive and not always successful
• Edward Jenner


  • Noticed that milkmaids who caught cow pox did not catch small pox
  • Carried out experiments by giving a dose of cow pox and then small pox
  • Published ideas on vaccination in 1798
• Cholera epidemic of 1854


  • Over 20,000 people died
  • John Snow plotted deaths and noticed a pattern which led him to the water pump on Broad Street in London
  • Waste from a cess pit was leaking into the water supply and that was spreading cholera
  • River Thames was so polluted it became the year of the 'Great Stink'
  • Government funded the building of an effective sewer system designed by Joseph Bazalgette
• Louis Pasteur


  • Carried out scientific experiments using microscopes and pasteurisation
  • Concluded that germs were harming milk, wine and beer
  • Proved spontaneous generation wrong
  • Published Germ Theory in 1861
  • Used Jenner's work to find vaccines for animal diseases anthrax, chicken cholera and rabies
  • Scientists then developed vaccines for typhoid tuberculosis, diphtheria and tetanus
• Robert Koch


  • Successfully identified that different germs cause many different diseases
  • Used chemical dyes so that microbes could be seen
  • Discovered that bacteria cased anthrax, tuberculosis and cholera
• Florence Nightingale


  • As a nurse in the Crimean War (1854) cleaned, opened windows, changed bedding and provided good meals
  • Death rate fell from 40% to 2%
  • Published 'Notes on Nursing' in 1859 which led to training of nurses and improvements in hospital care
  • By 1900 hospitals had different wards to separate infectious patients, operating theatres and specialist departments
  • Doctors and nurses had proper training
• Surgery


  1. 1799 Sir Humphrey Davy discovered that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) effectively dulled pain

  2. 1815 Michael Faraday found ether to be more effective

  3. Dr Robert Liston used ether as an anaesthetic

  4. 1847 James Simpson discovered that chloroform was an effective anaesthetic

  5. Queen Victoria used chloroform in childbirth in 1853

  6. Joseph Lister tried to find a way to stop bacteria getting into wounds by soaking bandages in carbolic acid

  7. By the 1890s surgery had developed into aseptic surgery which meant removing germs from operating theatres
• Now that surgeons could operate deeper into patients' bodies this led to deeper infection and more blood loss so more people died. This became known as the 'Black Period' of surgery
• Edwin Chadwick


  • Wrote a report called 'On the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Poor' in which he concluded that people were dying from unhealthy conditions and that clean water, drainage and sewerage were required
• The government could not ignore what was happening
• Public Health Act 1848


  1. Set up National Board of Health

  2. Local councils were encouraged to collect taxes to pay for improvements to water supplies and sewerage
• Public Health Act 1875


  1. Forced towns to make public heath improvements

  2. Became compulsory to improve sewers and drainage

  3. Provide fresh water

  4. Appoint medical officers and sanitary inspectors