MEDICAL CARE- Florence Nightingale was the founder of modern nursing, in August 1853 Florence
became superintendent at a woman’s hospital in Harley St. A decade later she had an ambition to become
a nurse. Florence’s work over following decades helped establish nursing as a respectable career for
woman. Her work improved the medical care thus improving hospitals. They became clean and spacious
places for patients to recover, Florence aimed to educate people about how to care for sick relatives and
neighbours, but she wanted to help the poorest in society, so would send nurses to workhouses to help
treat them. She aimed to make medical care available to everyone no matter what class or income.
LOUIS PASTEUR-In 1865, Pasteur helped save the silk industry. He proved that microbes were
attacking healthy silkworm eggs, causing the disease and that the disease would be eliminated if the
microbes were eliminated. Pasteur's first vaccine discovery was in 1879, with a disease called chicken
cholera. After accidentally exposing chickens to the attenuated form of a culture, he demonstrated
that they became resistant to the actual virus. Pasteur went on to extend his germ theory to develop
causes and vaccinations for diseases such as anthrax, cholera, TB and smallpox.
VICTORIAN HOSPITALS-Hospitals in Victorian times where not seen as places of healing but known as
gateways of death, with overcrowding wards and surgery with no anesthesia anyone going to hospital put
themselves at more risk of catching a deadly infection or virus. Many patients that where in surgery
would bleed to death, others would die of shock. Because of no anaesthesia surgeons then would have to
work quick amputations would sometimes last as little as 30 seconds. in the hospitals it would be mostly
poor people because the wealthy would pay for the doctor to attend them at home. Beds would be quite
close together which would cause the spread of some diseases.
JOSEPH LISTER- Lister introduced new principles of cleanliness in surgical practice in the late 18,00s,
before this patients could undergo a procedure successfully only to then die of infection which was called
ward fever. Lister became a professor in surgery in 1860 and read Pasteur’s work on microorganisms and
then decided to use one of his methods which was to expose wounds to chemical, he choose dressings
soaked in carbolic acid this was to cover the wound, by doing this infections where greatly reduced
ADULTERATION AND CONTAMINATION OF FOOD- In 1872 Dr Hassall an investigator into food adulteration
found many poisonous addictive’s for example, “ strychnine, cocculus inculus (both are hallucinogens) and
copperas in rum and beer; sulphate of copper in pickles, bottled fruit, wine, and preserves; lead chromate in
mustard and snuff; sulphate of iron in tea and beer; ferric ferrocynanide, lime sulphate, and turmeric in
chinese tea; copper carbonate, lead sulphate, bisulphate of mercury, and Venetian lead in sugar
confectionery and chocolate; lead in wine and cider; all were extensively used and were accumulative in
effect, resulting, over a long period, in chronic gastritis, and, indeed, often fatal food poisoning. Red lead
gave Gloucester cheese its 'healthy' red hue, flour and arrowroot a rich thickness to cream, and tea leaves
were 'dried, dyed, and recycled again.'