Industrial Period (1760-1840) Flashcards
Key Note for Industrial Period
INDIVIDUAL: Edward Jenner
- Created the first vaccine that successfully prevented people from catching smallpox.
- Since the 1720’s people had been using inoculation to prevent smallpox, although this could still be fatal and was very expensive.
- Jenner was a doctor in London and during the 1790’s he made a very important observation: He had regularly treated milk maids for a mild disease similar to smallpox called cowpox and noticed that they never contracted smallpox.
- He infected a local boy with cowpox to test his theory before trying to infect him with smallpox weeks later, which proved his observations right: he didn’t catch smallpox.
- The Royal Society refused to publish Jenner’s findings so he paid to have his own book printed which included a guide on how to carry out his unique way of immunisation.
- By 1800, 100,000 people worldwide had been vaccinated and over 12,000 British people.
Oppositions to Jenner
- They didn’t support the idea of giving an animal disease to humans.
- It ‘interfered’ with God’s plan.
- Doctors lost money when the government offered vaccinations for free.
- Inoculators lost their role and money.
Vaccine Timeline
1837 - Epidemic breaks out (smallpox) 35,000 deaths
1840 - The government makes inoculation a crime
1852 - The government makes smallpox vaccination compulsory
1871 - Public vaccination - vaccinators are appointed
1872 - The British government begin to enforce compulsory vaccination
INDIVIDUAL: Florence Nightingale
1) Nursing wasn’t seen as a respectable job for women and there was little training.
2) Nightingale was asked to lead a team of nurses at the Scutari military hospital during the Crimean War (1854-56).
3) She believed that miasma caused disease so paid great attention to hygiene, fresh air, and good supplies. This approach, though not scientific, led to the conditions in the hospital to improve greatly.
4) Her work was widely reported in journals and the news in Britain. She published a book called Note on Nursing and set up a training school for nurses.
Nightingale Hospital Improvements
She promoted pavillion style hospitals, where separate wards were built in hospitals to ensure infectious patients could be isolated.
Through her recommendations new hospitals were built from materials that could easily be cleaned and she encouraged more women to sign up and trained them according to her rules, increasing the number of skilled medical staff in hospitals.
INDIVIDUAL: John Snow
- Surgeon who was a leading anaesthetist in Soho.
- In 1854, Cholera broke out in Soho, London.
Snow created a spot map of all the deaths in his area and found a strong link between the deaths and a water pump on Broad Street - 1854. - He removed the handle from the pump so people couldn’t collect water from it and the number of deaths fell dramatically.
Why did some people oppose John Snow?
He had no scientific evidence and many scientists still believed in miasma.
Who developed anaesthetics?
James Simpson
What was used before the development of chloroform?
Before 1800: alcohol and opium - had little effect.
Laughing gas was used in 1840s but failed to ease the pain and patients remained conscious.
Ether 1840s. Could make patients really sick and cough during operations.
Chloroform by James Simpson
Was very effective and had little side effects. However, dosage was difficult and risky and could kill some people.
Some people were worried about the long term effects of chloroform.
The Victorians were very religious and believed that God inflicted pain for a reason and this was interfering with His plan.
First antiseptic was developed by…
Joseph Lister
Development of Carbolic Acid
1864 - Lister reads about Louis Pasteur’s Germ Theory and learns that carbolic acid kills parasites and bacteria in sewage.
1865 - Lister soaks bandages in carbolic acid to avoid wounds from getting infected.
1866 - Lister uses carbolic acid to clean wounds and equipment and also invents a spray that disinfects the air around the patient.
1867 - Lister’s wards have been free from infection for 9 months so he publishes his discovery.
Impact of anaesthetics and antiseptics
The two main problems in surgery, pain and infection, were solved. Deeper, more complex surgeries were available with a much higher success rate. Aseptic surgery was possible because antiseptics were used in operating theatres and on wounds and cuts.
GERM THEORY was founded by…
Louis Pasteur: 1861
How did Louis Pasteur develop Germ Theory?
In 1861, Pasteur who was a French chemist, published his Germ Theory which disproved spontaneous generation.
Proved that germs and bacteria caused decay - discovered this when researching why liquids and food turn sour and ‘go off’ when left open or in conditions that bacteria grow - research for brewing industry about beer.
Theorised that germs, the same way that they cause food to rot, can cause disease in humans, but was unable to prove this at first.
Major breakthrough that inspired other scientists like Joseph Lister and Robert Koch.
