industrial revolution

• edward jenner:

  • they believed giving small amounts of diseases could stop them from catching it again, this was called inoculation. people could still die and it was dangerous
  • a milkmaid visited jenner with a scab, she had cowpox, she said she couldn't get smallpox because she had cowpox
  • he got his gardener's son and took some pus from the milkmaid's sore and put it in the boy's cut. he gave him a small amount of smallpox to see if he would get sick and he didn't
• pasteur published germ theory in 1861 , in 1864 he carried out experiments that convinced other scientists that his theory was correct
• in 1865 there was a cholera epidemic in france which made pasteur's daughter die, he was determined to find the exact bacterium that caused cholera
• in 1876 robert koch found the microbe that caused anthrax
• over the next 20 years after discovering the microbe that caused anthrax, more bacteria causing diseases were discovered which were cholera, pneumonia and the plague
• pasteur created the vaccine against rabies in 1885
• why towns grew:

  • because of the industrial revolution so workers had to live close to factories which meant houses were badly built and crammed together
  • this meant people were crammed together, shared toilets and water supplies
  • dirty conditions and poor hygiene caused epidemics such as cholera
  • edward chadwick made a report on conditions called 'report on the sanitary conditions of the labouring population'
• the 1848 public health act - limited impact as no enforcement for example councils are 'allowed' to collect taxes
• john snow:

  • wanted to discover the cause of cholera
  • discovered contaminated water caused cholera
  • in 1554 there was a cholera outbreak on broad street and he proved water from the broad street pump made people sick so they removed the handle from the pump
  • in 1558 the thames dried up and revealed lots of human waste so new sewers were built by the government due to his work linking dirty water with disease
  • many people ignored snow's findings and no new public health act was created
• the 1875 public health act - forced local councils to improve sewers, provide fresh water supplies and appoint medical officers to check public facilities were clean
• hospitals in the middle ages + renaissance:

  • role was to look after elderly, poor or unmarried pregnant women
  • mostly ran by the church in the middle ages
  • small, usually containing 5 or 6 beds in the middle ages
  • bad conditions as the people who ran them lacked medical training and had no knowledge on the causes of disease
  • over 500 hospitals in 1500, but by 1700 there were only 3 in london and none were outside
  • the only hospital that treated the sick was st bartholomew's hospital
  • wards were cramped and dirty
• florence nightingale:

  • improved prevention for diseases in hospital
  • made hospitals less crowded and improved ventilation
  • wrote a book in 1859 called notes on nursing and in 1863 notes on hospitals
  • ordered hospitals to be cleaned
  • death rates in hospitals fell from 40 percent to 2 percent
  • limited impact as no impact on treatments or causes
  • small scope of impact as this only affected people in hospitals
• surgery before:

  • people were scared of surgery as it was likely they would die and they were scared of the pain
  • extreme lack of hygiene as doctors didn't wash their hands, wore their own clothes and no antiseptics were used
  • surgery was carried out in peoples houses
  • no anaesthetics were used
• ether which is an anaesthetic was discovered, this meant patients wouldn't feel pain so surgeouns could perform more complex operations
• in 1847 simpson experimented with a substance called chloroform and discovered it was an effective anaesthetic. later john snow invented an inhaler that controlled how much chloroform someone could inhale, reducing the risk of them dying from it
• complex surgeries often resulted in doctors causing infections deeper in the body as antiseptics weren't used and there was more blood loss. 1850 - 1870 became known as the black period of surgery as the number of deaths due to surgery increased
• antiseptics:

  • joseph lister discovered carbolic acid can be used as antiseptic to prevent infections when performing surgery
  • insisted doctors and nurses washed their hands with carbolic acid and developed a carbolic acid spray to kill germs in the air and around the operating table
  • had a massive impact, between 1864 and 1866 surgery death rate was 46 percent, after the invention between 1867 and 1870 surgery death rate fell to 15 percent