Health And Medicine
Hospitals are no match for diseases!
The spread of disease.
The first half of the 19th century consisted of Urban overcrowding, poor diets, poor sanitation, and medieval medical remedies gave people very poor health throughout the English population. The densely packed and poorly constructed working-class neighborhood made disease spread quickly through out Britain. Diseases like Cholera, Tuberculosis, Typhus, and influenza revenged in industrial towns. In 1849, 10,000 people died of Cholera in three months in London alone. Tuberculosis claimed 60,000 to 70,00 each decade of the 19th century.
Hospital Care in the 19th century.
Hospitals in the early 19th century were very unsanitary, uncomfortable, and dangerous. patients who needed surgery was often worked on with dirty tools. A patient who even made it through the surgery often died of infections days after the surgery from the unsanitary tools and care of the wound. For the poor being sent to the hospital was a death sentence. Wealthy or middle class people often got treated by doctors in their own homes.
Hospital treatment.
People who received medical treatment in the first half of the 19th century were likely to worsen under the care of trained doctors. Doctors still used allot of the remedies from the middle ages such as bloodletting and leeching. They concocted Poisonous potions of mercury, iron and arsenic. They also encouraged of heavy vomiting and laxatives, both which severely dehydrated the patent, especially children. 25 to 33% of children died before the age of 5.
Sanitaion brings new hope.
Florence Nightingale came to a British military hospital in 1854 and was disgusted on what she saw, She saw the sick and wounded laying on the bare ground with no sanitation. 60% of the patients who were sick or wounded died. Florence bullied the military staff into better sanitation for the patients. The sheets and laundry was cleaned regularly, the barracks where cleaned often and all wounded patients got help. The death rate soon went down to a 2% of all patients due to sanitation. Joseph Lister discovered how antiseptics can prevent infection in surgery by sterilizing the instruments before surgery. This led to more lives being saved and less deaths.