Unit 3.1 The Impetus for Public Health Reforms (COMPLETE) Flashcards
What was the impact of Industrialisation on the death rate?
Death rate fell due to:
- Medical industry producing vaccine that prevented smallpox.
- Agricultural industry producing better quality & quantity of food.
- Chemical industry producing cheap & accessible soap.
- Textile industry producing cheap cotton cloth.
What was the impact of Industrialisation on the birth rate?
Birth rate rose due to:
- Fewer people dying when they were young so more people survived to become parents.
What was the impact of Industrialisation on the marriage rate?
Marriage rate rose due to:
- Farmers employed fewer live-in servants in rural areas making it easier for labourers to start making lives together instead.
- Industrial workers could marry as soon as they got a job as unskilled workers began replacing the skilled who had apprenticeships.
What was the impact of Industrialisation on housing?
- Resulted in widespread, dense overcrowding.
- Urban communities responded to the demand of housing by using and adapting ‘vacant’ living spaces and building more.
- Cellars and attics became filled with working people and their families.
What was the impact of Industrialisation on sanitation?
- Lack of services to a house rather than the house itself that caused issues.
- Most houses in the first half of the 19th century lacked drainage, sewerage & regular water supply.
- Communal privies were usually outside in courtyards and alleys, and emptied into cesspits.
What were the issues surrounding water in regards to sanitary living conditions?
- Water was expensive and in short supply.
- Water was controlled by vested interests in the form of private water companies.
- Middle class often had water piped to their houses and due to uncertainty of supply stored it in tanks.
- Poorer areas had to make do with standpipes and people had to buy what they could afford once the water supply was turned on.
- People who were too poor or didn’t have enough often took their water from local wells and streams.
Why was life expectancy low for the working class?
- People living in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions and without easy access to a supply of clean water had body lice, which spread typhus fever.
- Influenza, scarlet fever and tuberculosis (the white plague) and measels were endemic and often killers.
- Typhoid and diarrhoea were common.
- Cholera hit Britain in 4 massive epidemics.
When were the Typhoid outbreaks and how many people died in 1847?
- In 1847 10,000 people in the north-west England were killed.
When were the Cholera epidemics and how many people died?
- 1831-1832. (31,000 killed)
- 1848-1849. (62,000 killed)
- 1866.
What was the Miasma theory of disease?
- Developed in the Middle Ages.
- It was believed that diseases were caused by the presence of miasma in the air.
- A miasma was a kind of poisonous gas, characterised by a foul smell.
- If one was to breathe in miasma they would become ill as miasma carried disease.
How did Industrialisation impact the Miasma theory?
- Rapid growth of towns and cities created many filthy, foul-smelling areas in most cities.
- It was in these areas where disease was rampant, epidemics were common and death rates high.
- Resolution was to clean up towns, improve housing and sanitation and therefore public health should automatically improve.
What was the Germ theory of disease?
- Scientists became interested in decaying matter and the maggots and flies that lived on and in it.
- Development of microscopes (1830) enabled them to observe micro-organisms in rotting material that were much smaller than flies and maggots.
- Scientists proposed 2 ideas regarding the origin of micro-organisms:
1) Decaying material created micro-organisms.
2) Micro-organisms in the air were attracted to decaying material.
Which theory of disease was correct?
- 1860, Louis Pasteur conducted a series of experiments proving that micro-organisms existed in the air.
- Came to the conclusion that if a certain micro-organism could cause disease in a silkworm then the same must apply to humans.
- Pasteur wasn’t believed and many influential people were slow to let go of Miasma theory.
- Robert Koch and his team during the 1880s&1890s identified the germs that caused most of the killer diseases of the 19th century.
During the 1832 Cholera Epidemic what percentage of those who contracted the disease died?
- 40-60%.
Where were the Cholera-phobia riots?
- 30 recorded Cholera-phobia riots in towns and cities throughout England.
- Principally affected were:
Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield.
What was the basis for the Cholera-phobia riots in Liverpool?
- Generally held belief that cholera victims were being taken to the local hospital where they were murdered by doctors in order to provided bodies for dissection.
- In 1826, 33 bodies had been found on the Liverpool docks ready to be shipped to Scotland for dissection.
What was the basis for the Cholera-phobia riots in Exeter?
- Authorities instituted regulations for the disposal of cholera-infected corpses as well as their clothing & bedding.
- People rioted and even attacked gravediggers, because they objected to the burial of cholera victims in local graveyards.
What was clear about the basis of the Cholera-phobia riots?
- Weren’t directed at the authorities for failing to contain the epidemic.
- Arose because of specific fears that medical students were stealing bodies for dissection.
- Doctors were murdering victims.
- Victims buried in unconsecrated ground.
- Victims buried hastily, often before they were dead and without religious ceremony.
How did the government react to the Cholera outbreak?
- The government had to take action against cholera, which they hadn’t done about previous ‘dirty’ diseases.
- Set up a temporary Board of Health.
What did the British government do in reaction to the Cholera outbreak in 1831?
- Sent 2 medical commissioners to Russia, where there had previously been an outbreak, in order to asses the situation.
- Their report coupled with general alarm led to the a temporary Board of Health being set up.
What did the temporary Board of Health advise local governments to set up during the Cholera outbreak?
- Advised local government areas to set up their own boards of health which could deal with problems at a grass-root level.
- Suggested that these local boards of health should include one or more magistrates, a clergyman, some ‘substantial householders’ and one or more medical men.
Who was apart of the temporary Board of Health?
- President and 4 fellows of the Royal College of Physicians.
- Superintendent general of quarantine.
- Director-general of the Army medical department.
- Medical commissioner of the Victualling Office.
- Two civil servants.
What did the local boards of health do during the Cholera outbreak?
- Appointed district inspectors to report on the food, clothing and bedding of the poor, ventilation of their dwellings, number of people per room, the ways in which they kept clean and their behaviour.
- The Boards of health were a trifle hazy about what advice to issue in the occasion someone did catch cholera.
What advice did the local boards of health issue during the Cholera outbreak?
- Houses were to be whitewashed and limed and all infected furniture and clothing was to be fumigated.
- People with cholera were to be put in strict quarantine.
- Food and flannel clothing were to be distributed to the poor.
- Temporary fever hospitals were to be set up.
What remedies did the Board of Health suggest to those who caught Cholera?
- Rubs of castor oil & laudanum.
- Plasters of mustard.
- Peppermint and hot turpentine.
- Bleeding by leeches.
- Warm baths.
- This advice suggests that the central government was, for the first time, officially recognising that cleanliness, adequate clothing and food are necessary factors in public health.
How successful was the temporary Board of Health’s advice during the cholera outbreak?
- Not all cities conformed to the advice.
- The reports that did end up being submitted tended to be more informative as opposed to disease prevention or potential cures.
- Some areas set up cholera hospitals and others tried to institute a quarantine regime.
What problems did the Boards of Health encounter surrounding legality during the Cholera epidemic?
- What legal right did the boards have to enforce measures such as having houses limed and separating children from parents to send them to fever hospitals.
- In 1832, temporary ‘Cholera Acts’ were passed allowing local authorities to enforce some measures and to finance them from the poor rates.
What were the limitations to the Local Boards of Health?
- Local action taken was often haphazard.
- Once the epidemic died down they were disbanded.
What was the ‘Miasmic Theory’ surrounding Cholera?
- Suggested that Cholera was spread by a ‘miasma of filth’ that was breathed in from infected air.
- This theory led to action: the removal of heaps of excrement was a step in the right direction however the connecting of sewers to rivers and other water courses.
What was significance of the 1831 journal ‘The Lancet’?
- A journal written by doctors for doctors.
- Reported a community of Jews in Wiesnez had kept themselves free from cholera by rubbing themselves with a homemade ointment.
Why was Prayer a recommended cure for Cholera?
- Many believed cholera was a punishment for lax and immoral behaviour.
- Many of those who prayed for themselves survived as well as those who were being prayed for.
- Prayer was proven to be efficacious.
How did authors contribute towards a change in attitudes towards public health?
- Elizabeth Gaskall and Charles Dickens could paint vivid pen-pictures of working-class conditions in mid-Victorian Britain.
- Dickens had first hand experience of poverty, his books were largely successful and reached a large audience, his works were serialised and made accessible.
- Despite not being poor herself Gaskell witnessed desperate poverty.
- Living conditions described by authors resonated with Mayhew’s findings.
How did national and local newspapers contribute towards a change in attitudes towards public health?
- Reported on public health matters & commented on them (not always favourably).
- Occasionally connections were made between poor living conditions and disease.
- National Newspapers had the greatest impact on changing attitudes of those who had the means to make a difference.
- ‘The Times’ headed a campaign for effective sewerage of London as a result of The 1858 Great Stink.
- In 1827, journalist John Wright exposed The Grand Junction Waterworks company for selling the aristocratic contaminated water filled with diluted human waste.
How did artists contribute towards a change in attitudes towards public health?
- Created paintings and engravings of the rural, urban poor.
- Usually hung in the homes of the middle/upper class.
- Rural poor were presented as romantic idylls.
- Urban poor were far more disturbing.
