Industrial Medicine (1700-1900) Flashcards
The industrial revolution brought more people into cities? What effect did this have on health?
Because of the increased number of people living in cities, public health declined due to overcrowding and poor sanitisation
What conditions did many people live in, during the industrial revolution?
Many people lived in cramped conditions with little access to good sanitation.
Give 2 examples of widespread epidemics of infectious diseases
Infectious diseases:
Cholera, typhoid, typhus, smallpox, tuberculosis
What were the three main reasons for the public health crisis?
The three main reasons for the public health crisis:
The rapid pace of industrialisation.
Weak local and national government.
Lack of understanding of the causes of disease.
What does Laissez-faire mean? How was this word used?
Laissez-faire is a French word, meaning ‘leave be’.
This word was used to describe governments who don’t get involved in the day-to-day lives of their populations.
What was the Great Stink, when was it?
The Great Stink was an event in Central London during July and August 1858 in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames.
What was the cause of the Great Stink?
The hot weather was the cause of the Great Stink
Also, an aging sewer system that directly emptied into the Thames caused the Great Stink
Why was London so terrified of the Great Stink?
People believed that diseases could be transmitted by miasma, bad smells.
The unbearable smell of human waste in the Thames caused people to panic about getting sick from the bad air.
Who did Parliament commission to build a new sewer system?
Parliament commissioned the great engineer, Joseph Bazalgette to build a new sewer system
Why did the government eventually take action about the smell from the Thames?
The government only took action about the smell when it impacted them. The Parliament building was built on the Thames, so they needed to fix the problem quickly.
What did the egg-shaped design of Bazalgette’s sewage system do?
The egg shaped design of Bazalgette’s new sewage system meant that water and waste wouldn’t get stuck to the walls.
Who was Edwin Chadwick?
Edwin Chadwick was a civil servant, employed by the Poor Law Commission.
What was Edwin Chadwick asked to do, by Parliament?
Edwin Chadwick was asked by Parliament to investigate living conditions in Britain.
What did his 1842 Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population conclude?
His report concluded that a lot of poverty and ill health was caused by terrible living conditions and not by idleness.
How did people react to Edwin Chadwick’s report?
People were shocked and public opinion changed
What were the three main things Chadwick concluded were needed to improve health?
Chadwick concluded that three main things were needed to improve health:
Refuse removal
An effective sewerage system and clean running water in every house
A qualified medical officer appointed in each area
What theory did Chadwick believe in?
Edwin Chadwick believed in miasma and did not push forward correct scientific methods for the prevention of disease
What did Edwin Chadwick’s work contribute to?
Chadwick’s work contributed to the Public Health Acts
Give one thing Edwin Chadwick suggested the government did to improve health?
Chadwick recommended that the government:
Provided clean water
Improved drainage systems
Enabled local councils to clear away refuse from homes and streets
At the time, Edwin Chadwick wasn’t very significant. Why did he become more significant later on?
Chadwick became more successful later on due to other people publishing evidence that supported his claims
Give one symptom of cholera
Symptoms of cholera:
Dehydration (Because of diarrhoea)
Diarrhoea
Thicker blood - which ruptured blood vessels under the skin and made the skin turn blue
How did Cholera spread?
Cholera spread by person to person contact, or through water contaminated with the faeces of a sufferer.
Who did cholera mainly affect?
Cholera mainly affected the poorest people in the slums, workhouses, prisons and asylums
What problem did doctors have with cholera?
Doctors found cholera impossible to treat
Give one attempt to prevent the spread of cholera
Attempts to prevent the spread of cholera:
Steps were taken to clean up the dirtiest streets
The belief was that miasma and rotting material caused disease
Government encouraged cities to set up boards of health and provide clean water supplies
When did cholera arrive in Great Britain? When did it reach London?
Cholera arrived in Great Britain in 1831. It arrived in London from 1832.
After the first epidemic of cholera, how many more were there?
There were four further epidemics across the country for the next three decades
By the end of 1832, how many people had cholera killed?
By the end of 1832, cholera had killed 5,275 people
Who was John Snow?
John Snow was a British doctor (physician)
Why did John Snow realise cholera wasn’t caused by miasma?
Snow realised cholera wasn’t caused by miasma because it affected the gut and not the lungs.
John Snow looked at a map of deaths from cholera. What did he find?
He looked at a map of deaths from cholera and found they were all located close to a pump. That pump being the Broad Street Pump.
There was one person who died from cholera, who lived in a different town to everyone else. How was this explained and what did this prove?
It was later discovered that they were getting water from the Broad Street Pump sent to them because they preferred how it tasted.
This proved Snow’s theory that the disease travelled in water and had something to do with the Broad Street Pump.
How many deaths were there from cholera, within 200m of the Broad Street pump?
Within 200m of the Broad Street Pump, there were 500 deaths.
What was a cesspit?
A cesspit was a pit for storing sewage or waste
Who was and wasn’t affected by the infected water from the Broad Street pump?
Workers in factories close to the pump were badly affected.
Workhouse residents who had their own water supply weren’t badly affected.
Brewery workers who drank free beer weren’t affected.
What did John Snow do, to stop the Broad Street pump from being used?
Snow took the handle off of the Broad Street pump, which stopped people getting water from it and therefore stopped the spread of the disease
What technique, that is still used today, did Snow use to predict where cholera spread from?
Snow used a map of the area where the cholera outbreak was. He predicted how the disease spread from where the infected patients were.
The General Board of Health clung onto the miasma theory, why?
The General Board of Health were avoiding the cost of providing clean water
What was the problem with Snow’s theory?
Snow had no scientific evidence to show what caused the disease.
It would be another seven years before Pasteur published his Germ Theory (three years after Snow died) and another 30 years before Koch isolated the bacterium that caused the disease.
Give two positive/negative impacts of John Snow
Positive impacts:
Proved that cholera was caused by dirty water
Short term- saved lives in the area around the pump (Soho)
Did (eventually) lead to government improving the sewage supply. Joseph Bazalgette planned this from 1875 - although this was more down to the Great Stink in 1858
Negative impacts:
No scientific proof - did not know about germs until 3 years after Snow’s death; 30 years before Koch isolated the germ that caused it
Not believed by many people - some scientists still believed in miasmas
Government refused to act immediately - cost
What is inoculation?
Inoculation is the act of immunizing someone against a disease by introducing infective material, microorganisms, or vaccine into the body.
What was smallpox?
Smallpox was a serious infectious disease that was contagious.
What were the symptoms of smallpox?
People who had smallpox had a fever and a distinctive, progressive skin rash.
What was cowpox?
Cowpox was an infectious disease that caused large blisters, a fever and swollen glands.
How was cowpox typically caught?
Cowpox was typically caught after contact with an infected cow.
What was the worst epidemic of smallpox? How many people died?
The worst smallpox epidemic was in 1796, when 3548 people died.
Who was Edward Jenner?
Edward Jenner was a doctor
What happened when Edward Jenner was 8?
When Jenner was 8, there was an outbreak of smallpox
During the smallpox outbreak, what did Jenners doctor do to cure him and his friends?
What actually happened?
Jenner’s doctor grinded up scabs and blew powdered scabs into his and his friend’s noses in hope of curing them
However, the boys actually caught smallpox
Why did Jenner decide to become a doctor?
Jenner decided to be a doctor because he saw his friend die in front of him from smallpox
To understand smallpox, what did Jenner do?
To understand smallpox, Jenner investigated scabs and read about smallpox
Describe the process in which Jenner discovered the first vaccine
Edward Jenner regularly treated dairy maids for cowpox and noticed that during the smallpox epidemic, none of the maids he had previously treated had caught it. He decided the two must be connected.
He tested his theory in 1796 by infecting James Phipps, a young local boy, with cowpox.
Six weeks later, he infected the boy with smallpox, but James did not catch it.
After testing his theory on multiple people, he wrote up his findings, naming the technique ‘vaccination’ after the Latin word for cow, ‘vacca’.
Give one impact of Edward Jenner
He developed the first vaccine, allowing many others to be made in the future.
He saved many lives with the vaccine.
The vaccine replaced the dangers of inoculation.
