infectious disease 1800 - 1950

From the middle of the 18^th century machines were invented that manufactured goods using water and steam power. Factories were built and thousands if working class people moved to towns to be near them. The growth of towns and cities with no regard to public health led to very unhealthy living conditions and presented the government and authorities with a problem.

The period of time between the 18^th and 19^th century was plagued with disease. King Cholera was on the large after first coming to the governments attention in 1831. People could die within a day and thousands were dieing every week. Other diseases like diphtheria, ‘TB’ and Typhoid and smallpox were also on the ‘large’.

People had lots of different theories on how to protect themselves against these rampaging killers. The main one was the ‘miasma’ theory, this consisted of doctors claiming it was the terrible smells carrying the disease, they did not, however, realise that the stench was coming from the Thames river. The people kept sufferers away from the well, burnt barrels of tar, and also bought foolish medicines from Apothecaries, all of these were in vain. The truth was, they didn’t really know the cause of these diseases, and none of these cures worked.

For the first half of the 19^th century the Government did not accept that it was its job to legislate to improve living conditions and public heath. It adopted a ‘Laissez Faire’ attitude, (let do). As the century progressed government began to finally adapt a more responsible attitude.

Inoculation is a means of stopping someone from getting an infection, not a way of curing one. This idea was not thought of in great detail until Edward Jenner. Jenner was a doctor working in Gloucestershire, who, investigating an old folk tale, that women that had caught cowpox had never contracted smallpox. Edward Jenner decided to investigate this, so he carried out an experiment on James Phips, an 8 year old boy. Jenner collected some pus from a cowpox boil and injected it into Phips’ hand. Phips fell ill with cow pox. Jenner then injected Phips with smallpox, but he was immune. He called this process vaccination, from the word ‘vacca’ meaning Cow in Latin. Although it worked, people still did not understand how it worked, only that it did. The government recognised the significance of Jenner’s work and backed him, giving him a grant of £20,000 to begin with, and making vaccination compulsory in 1854. This was one of the first signs that the Government were taking an interest in public health.

　

　

By the 19^th century living conditions were very poor. The only way to store excrement was in cess pools that overflowed and leaked into water supplies, these were cleared out by gong farmers, maybe once a month. Many solutions came about to help this problem, Sir john Harrington invented the water closet and the government attempted to help by pumping the sewage into the river, this caused a rancid smell, that stunk out the great city. Cholera was at large and so was the, terribly wrong, miasmic theory. There were other remedies for cholera, but without understanding how disease spread, any attempt to deal with them was unlikely to be effective because they were based on wrong ideas, these were called ’quack remedies’.

Some people were campaigning for change, people like Edward Chadwick, although, he unfortunately followed the miasmic theory. Doctor John snow saw some houses had cholera and some didn’t, the ones that did all got water from the same water pump, so he took the pump away. This began the theory that cholera was ‘water born’, and once Mps feared for their own safety, they introduced legislation.

In the 1850s Louis Pasteur, a French chemist, investigated the problem of liquids turning sour in the brewing and vinegar industries. More powerful microscopes had been invented recently which meant that he could observe the growth of unwanted small organisms in the liquid. He discovered heating the liquid killed the bacteria and stopped the liquid going sour.

In 1861 Pasteur published his germ theory, showing that there were microbes in the air and that they caused decay. His work proved the idea of spontaneous generation (Matter rots from within) was wrong because no decay happened if matter was placed in a sealed container. This proved that microbes causing decay were not produced from the matter itself but were in the air around it. In 1879 Pasteur’s team was studying chicken cholera microbes and injecting chickens with the disease. A culture of the bacteria was accidentally left on the side and when it was used, a couple of weeks later, it had become a weakened version, which didn’t harm the chickens. Pasteur realized that this could be used as a vaccine to create immunity from that disease for chickens. He called this process vaccination, in tribute to Jenner’s work.

Now that the government knew the problem, they put money into improving the situation. The death rate for some diseases were declining in any event as a result of the introduction of laws to improve living and working conditions from 1875 onward. This included the revision of much cleaner drinking water and proper sewers.

Thanks to the work of Robert Koch, who was interested in Pasteur’s work and bought a microscope. His approach impressed the German government and they funded him and his team. His methods included staining bacteria to make them more visible. He went on the discover some cures for the most deadly diseases, including Typhus, TB and Cholera.

To conclude, the Government found it difficult to deal with infectious diseases because they did not know what caused the, and until the mid 19^th century they did not believe it was their roll to legislate the public health of their people. Until Pasteur and Koch showed that with the right conditions, Towns and cities could be healthy again.