Medicine - Industrial Flashcards
(25 cards)
Why did few places enact the First Public Health Act of 1848?
It wasn’t compulsory
In 1842, what did Edwin Chadwick write in relation to sanitation in England?
Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain
What term describes the governments attitude to helping people before 1832?
Laissez-faire
How did the government react to the Great Stink of 1858?
Paid £3 million for Joseph Bazalgette to build 130km of sewers under London
What are the four things that the Second Public Health Act (1875) made compulsory?
- Clean water supply for homes
- Covered sewers
- Medical officers
- Rubbish collection and disposal
Which Act of 1875 ordered that slum housing be torn down?
Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act
What year did the Rivers Pollution Act make it illegal to dump rubbish in rivers?
1876
What three dangers did patients face during surgery starting the nineteenth century?
- Pain
- Infection
- Blood loss
What did Joseph Priestley use as pain relief in 1772?
Laughing gas (nitrous oxide)
Why was Ether unpopular as an anaesthetic?
- It caused patients to vomit and to thrash around during surgery
- It was highly flammable
How did Lister improve medicine in the Renaissance period?
- Improved surgery by using Carbolic acid (1867) as a disinfectant
- Also developed a spray that prevented infections’ development during surgery
Who became unconscious when experimenting with chloroform?
James Simpson (1847)
What did surgeons use to tie off blood vessels?
(Silk) ligatures
What actions helped to dramatically reduce the death rates in the Crimean hospitals? (1854)
Nurses:
- Cleaned out sewers
- Washed bedding
- Kept the wards clean
How did Nightingale revolutionise nursing after the Crimean War? (1854-1863)
(How she was known, public influence, published books, improvements to hospitals)
- National hero, “Lady with the lamp”, fame does around the world
- Whilst in Turkey, public donated £44,000 (equivalent to £2 million modern day) to support Nightingales work, she used this to set up the Nightingale Training School to train nurses to be professional and disciplined
- Published a best-selling book in 1859, Notes on Nursing.
- Published Notes on Hospitals in 1863, in which she supported her arguments using statistics and infographics.
- She recommended that hospitals have different wards to separate and treat patients with different illnesses, so infection more easily controlled, and said hospitals should be light and airy
What were the believed causes of disease in the Industrial Period?
Change:
- 1720, Richard Bradley suggested “microscopic poisonous insects” caused illness, but his ideas were largely ignored
- Spontaneous generation
Continuity:
- People knew gems existed but not that they caused illness
- Miasma
- 1600s, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek studied germs using a microscope but decided these “animalcules” were harmless
What was spontaneous generation and who promoted it?
- Belief that microbes (germs) come decaying matter
- Promoted by Félix Pouchet
How did Louis Pasteur discover Germ Theory (1861)?
- Joined a competition in the French Academy of Sciences to prove or disprove spontaneous generation
- Pasteur had already been investigating what caused milk and beer to go sour
- He proved that if germs were killed with heat (pasteurisation) souring didn’t occur
- Pasteur used a swan-neck jar to prove that if germs could not get into a substance, it would not go sour
- Spontaneous generation was disproved and Pasteur proved Germ Theory: the idea that microbes in the air cause decay
How and why did Robert Koch help Germ Theory to be accepted?
- 1876, he focused on the germ that he believed causes Anthrax (sores on the lungs)
- He develops a way to grow and dye the germs so that they can be photographed.
- He then used the germs to infect mice, which become ill, so proving the link between germs and illness.
- His work using dyes and photography meant that different germs that caused different illnesses had started to be identified, adding weight to Germ Theory
How did Joseph Lister help Germ Theory be accepted in Britain?
He successfully applied Germ Theory to limit infection during surgery
How did Joseph Bazalgette help Germ Theory to be accepted in Britain?
- He opened his sewers in 1865 to get rid of miasma, which was believed to cause Cholera.
- When there was an outbreak of Cholera in 1866, people started to accept that germs, not miasma, caused illness.
When was Germ Theory largely accepted in Britain?
1900
What were Robert Koch’s accomplishments between 1876-1882?
- Dyeing and photographing germs, helping different germs for different illnesses to be identified
- Identified the germ for Tuberculosis
- With the support of his respective government, beats Pasteur to identifying the Cholera germ.
- Finds the germs responsible for wound infection, meningitis, plague and pneumonia.
