Industrial revolution: hospitals, surgery, public health Flashcards
(36 cards)
What was the role of physicians/doctors in the industrial Revolution?
They were eager to learn from experience, not textbooks. Many offered their services to hospitals for free so that they could practise their skills.
What was the role of apothecaries in the Industrial Revolution?
Apothecaries were based in hospitals. There was still a reliance on herbal remedies, as chemical cures were not yet very successful, but apothecaries gradually lost influence as medicine became more sophisticated.
What were hospitals like in the 18th century?
1) New hospitals were opened through donations from wealthy and middle class people.
2) Hospitals were becoming places of treatment and not just rest; physicians and apothecaries studied patients rationally.
3) There was a small number of untrained nurses there.
4) They were very unsanitary (the hospitals).
5) People didn’t like being treated in hospitals and would avoid it if they could.
What caused Florence Nightingale go on to improve hospital conditions?
She was a nurse in a field hospital during the Crimean war, between 1853 and 1856. She was unhappy with the conditions there and so improved them, then returned to Britain to do the same.
What changes did Florence Nightingale introduce while working in the Crimean war?
- Had an organised schedule.
- Made the hospital more sanitary.
- Blanketed soldiers.
Give 5 examples of hospital improvements during the 19th century.
Florence Nightingale was responsible for much of the improvement, for example:
1) Scrubbing brushes to remove dirt near patients.
2) Clean bedding and good meals.
3) 1860 Nightingale School for Nurses.
4) Nightingale promoted the pavilion layout to separate patients.
What was Nightingale’s impact on hospitals?
- She applied pressure to standards before the germ theory was published, sparking the beginning of aseptic conditions.
- She professionalised nursing by creating the Nightingale School for Nurses in 1860.
Nightingale had a positive effect on mortality rates, e.g. she reduced Crimean war military hospital deaths from __% to __%.
40% to 2%.
What are anaesthetics?
Substances used to prevent patients from feeling pain.
What did James Simpson discover and when?
James Simpson was a surgeon who discovered at a dinner party in 1847 that the chemical chloroform could knock people out for a duration of time.
James Simpson was a surgeon who discovered the chemical chloroform in 1847. How was this important?
- Before 1847, anaesthetics were limited, so surgeons had had to rely on opium, alcohol and even hypnotism as methods of calming patients.
- Chloroform, once discovered, was used in surgery as an anaesthetic (as it knocked people out).
What was the problem with chloroform when it was initially introduced to surgery?
An overdose of chloroform slowed down the heart too quickly, causing death.
John Snow discovered that young, extremely fit and scared people were most at risk of death from an overdose of chloroform.
What did John Snow develop in 1848 and why was this invention significant?
The chloroform dispenser.
This meant that the dosage could be regulated, which was important as too much of it slowed down the heart too quickly, causing death.
He discovered that young, extremely fit and scared people were most at risk of death from an overdose of chloroform.
Name an event which caused chloroform to become widely popular in Britain.
In 1853, Queen Victoria used it during the birth of her son.
Why was there initially opposition to anaesthetics?
- Fear of death.
- Religious objections
Why were people initially scared that anaesthetics would cause death?
Anaesthetics arguably made surgery more dangerous, as deeper surgeries were attempted in the same dirty conditions.
Infection and death rates increased; this was known as the “black period” of surgery.
Many people also believed patients were more likely to die if unconscious than if awake and screaming.
14y/o Hannah Greener was one of the first patients to die, having received chloroform in an operation.
Why was there religious opposition to anaesthetics?
Religious people thought anaesthetics were interfering with the pain God intended people to face.
What are antiseptics?
Infection-preventing chemicals used to dress wounds.
Who was Joseph Lister and what did he discover?
Joseph Lister was an English surgeon who used the principles of germ theory to theorise, given that wounds are essentially rotting flesh, that there was a chemical which could clear them of germs.
He discovered in 1865 that carbolic acid worked, after using it on a patient’s broken leg.
This was the first antiseptic.
Joseph Lister discovered that carbolic spray could clear wounds of germs; it was an antiseptic. How did he act on his discovery?
1) In the same year, he developed a carbolic spray pump.
2) His mortality rate during operations fell almost 50% from 1864-66.
3) He detailed 11 cases, in his medical journal “The Lancet”, where carbolic acid had been used successfully.
Joseph Lister discovered that chloroform could clear wounds of germs; it was an antiseptic. In the same year, he developed a carbolic spray pump.
His mortality rate during operations fell __% from __-__ and __% from __-__.
He detailed __ cases, in his medical journal “__ __”, where carbolic acid had been used successfully.
- 47% from 1864-66
- 15% from 1867-70
- 11
- “The Lancet”
What did William Watson Cheyne publish and when?
He “antiseptic surgery” in 1882, which championed the work of Lister, in the context of breakthroughs on germs made by Pasteur and Koch.
Why was the short term impact of antiseptic surgery small?
1) The science of the germ theory was not yet widely understood, so not all surgeons were willing to accept germs as the cause of infection and therefore the concept of antiseptics.
2) Some surgeons argued that, since carbolic spray made their hands sore, it couldn’t be doing the patient any good.
The short term impact of antiseptic surgery was small, but attitudes gradually changed. By when was it widely supported?
1882.
