Medical Discoveries in Public Health During the Industrial Revolution in Europe
During the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th century, a new life style was rapidly spreading around Europe. All sorts of technology was being created and Europe was modernizing. Business was booming like never before, and all kinds of products were being made more effectively and in greater quantities. A vast amount of people were living fabulous lives, having great jobs, like managing a company, and getting to live in huge houses with their families. But an even greater amount of people were not living such a great life. They were living in slums, working dangerous jobs with low incomes such as working in mines, with just enough money to survive.
Diseases and sicknesses were killing an innumerable amount of people in the slums because no one knew about what caused the germs. Germs were just thought to appear with no cause. But thousands of people were dying which raised awareness and curiosity. Different types of scientists were doing experiments to try and figure out what germs were, and what caused it. They wanted to know why people were dying from diseases and how it could be prevented. This curiosity sparked new ideas, new discoveries and new inventions to help out the medical situation.
By the 1900s, a huge amount of medical inventions and discoveries had been made, some of which including general anesthetics, pasteurization, the germ theory, and radium. This exhibit will showcase three of the most revolutionary inventions and discoveries in medicine during the Industrial Revolution: the x-ray, the smallpox vaccine, and anesthetics.
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The X-ray Machine
The x-ray machine is a mechanism that allows electromagnetic rays to go through low density materials such as flesh, but is absorbed or reflected by high density materials such as bone. It was accidentally discovered in 1895 by a German physicist named Wilhelm Röntgen when he was experimenting with a cathode ray tube. (Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen)
The first x-ray picture ever taken, was of Röntgen’s wife’s hand. When she saw the picture of her own skeleton, she exclaimed that she had seen death. Everyone was extremely excited by this new technology. People were able to see their own skeleton. They would put on jewelry and take pictures to see the silhouette of the jewelry. (Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen)
Later, people realized the real advantage. They had never been able to investigate bone structures unless they had a dead body. But after the x-ray was discovered, they could easily diagnose anything from a broken bone to a tumor to a disease like pneumonia on a living person. (Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, X-ray machine)
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Hand mit Ringen (Hand with Rings): this is a print of Wilhelm Röntgen‘s wife’s hand taken on 22 December 1895. It was his first “medical” x-ray and was presented to Physik Institut, University of Freiburg’s Professor Ludwig Zehnder on 1 January 1896.
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The Smallpox Vaccine
Smallpox was a vicious and quite frankly, a disgusting disease that killed one third of people it infected during the industrial revolution. The disease has been thought to have caused more deaths than any other infectious disease. It was airborne and highly contagious. In fact, if someone were to breathe even a single particle of smallpox, there was a chance of infection. What also made it so contagious was the fact that if someone caught smallpox, they wouldn't know for about ten days, when symptoms started appearing. But, in the duration of the ten days, they were still contagious. They could infect people and not even know it. Smallpox causes tons of horrible in a specific process. After ten days, they begin to get backaches, fever, and vomiting. Then small red spots begin to appear. The spots then turn into blisters which later split the skin horizontally. The pain is practically unbearable. Later, the blisters become hard and the skin represents a "cobblestone street". Then, people become unable to speak and sometimes their eyes are squeezed shut with the blisters. In most cases, the person will then die from a heart attack, shock, or a breathing arrest. If they survive, the blisters become scabs and fall off, leaving scars all over the body. (Smallpox, The Demon in the Freezer)
The smallpox vaccine was discovered by Edward Jenner who realized that dairy workers exposed to cowpox were immune to smallpox. He observed for a long time then tested his theory then took fluid from the cowpox blister of one of the dairy workers and injected it into an 8 year old boy. The boy was diagnosed with cowpox. Then the boy was injected with smallpox and he remained healthy which proved Jenner’s theory correct. (Jenner, Edward)
After Jenner’s An Inquiry to the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae was published, there was a huge demand for the vaccine in Europe and a year and a half later, the number of deaths caused by smallpox had dropped by two-thirds. By 1800, 10,000 people around the world had been vaccinated. (Jenner, Edward)
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This is the cover page of Edward Jenner’s An Inquiry to the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae in 1798. This book launched a huge demand for the smallpox vaccination throughout Europe.
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Antiseptics
In the 1800s, a huge amount of medical patients were dying from sepsis caused by post-surgical wounds getting infected. Sepsis is when a common bacteria, such as pneumonia, escapes from a specific part of the body and gets into the blood stream. A very serious infection develops and causes internal organs to shut down. In the 1800s, sepsis was a huge problem because it was usually fatal and there weren't many treatments. A surgeon named Joseph Lister became aware of all the deaths caused by infections in the hospital. He researched using Louis Pasteur’s ideas on germs and was able to conclude that the same germs in the air, caused wounds to get infected. He also found out that carbolic acid was being used to treat sewage. (Joseph Lister and Antiseptics)
Later, he developed a way to destroy germs using carbolic acid as an antiseptic. The antiseptic surgical technique was first used in March 1865 and was successful. (Lister, Joseph). After that, Lister cleaned and sterilized wounds with carbolic acid. Then in 1867, he announced in a meeting with the British Medical Association that his wards of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary had had no cases of sepsis (infections that get into the blood stream, causing very serious sicknesses and diseases, and in that time, almost always resulting in death) for nine months. By 1870, the idea was spread to Germany during the Franco-Prussian War. The technique saved tons of Prussian soldiers. (Joseph Lister and Antiseptics). Because of antiseptics, huge amounts of people didn’t die from post-surgery infections because the wounds were sterilized. (Lister, Joseph).
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Operation using Lister’s Carbolic Spray in 1869. This is a very early picture of Joseph Lister and his team sterilizing a patient’s wound with carbolic acid spray when the idea was still a new concept.
Works Cited: becca-sources for medicine.doc
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Rebecca
