Conditions During the Industrial Revolution

Conditions in the industrial revolution were not impeccable. As more jobs became open with the invention of the steam powered engines, production was increasing. More factories were being built to house new machinery. The conditions in these new factories were not great, as scientist had not yet discovered the reaction in germs and the spreading of diseases.

Towns were all segregated by class, and by working class areas. With the every day worker, came with the worst conditions. Because the governing classes lived in different areas, they were never able to see the conditions the workers had to work in. Workers were protesting, and would be ignored. They then had to keep working in those horrible conditions. These conditions lead to diseases spreading quickly.  As one of the main killers of the industrial age was Cholera. As cities were growing in population, and the conditions for these workers were awful, this disease spread with ease, killing thousands. Typhoid was another deadly disease, mainly spread through water not being cleaned properly. People were drinking contaminated water, staring the wave of cholera and typhoid. As these workers would get ill, they had no choice but to keep working as they often had families to feed. Because the workers worked in conditions where germs spread easily, these common diseases would spread very quickly amongst the other workers.

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Doctors in the Industrial Revolution

In the late 1800's, many medical advantages took place such as the acceptance of the germ theory and anaesthetics. Anaesthetics put people in a medical induced coma and the germ theory was when they finally believed that micro organisms could cause diseases. Medical practices during the industrial revolution were carried out in either private homes or in doctors' offices. Hospitals in the large cities were usually known for being non-sanitary. Many people received diseases in the hospitals because doctors didn't yet know how they spread. The people that were wealthy enough were able to afford doctors to come to their houses. Doctors worked in large areas of geography. They would usually travel by foot or horseback which meant they had limited supplies to work with. They were also expected to treat everything from fevers to sick livestock. Over time doctors became more aware of body parts and were soon able to specialize in specific medical studies. Special tools and procedures were also created, such as the stethoscope. Stethoscopes were a new technology that was used quite often in patient examinations. A popular treatment was blood letting. This was when the doctor would cut into a patient in a specific area. It was believed to cure sickness although it was actually just causing the patient to unnecessarily lose blood. Anaesthetics were used towards the end of the century but had a risk of asphyxiation because of the use of chloroform. The doctors were limited to the patients pain tolerance and the surface of the body. Doctors were paid in goods - meaning anything of value that the patient had in place of actual currency which is common now.

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Diseases in the Industrial Revolution

Disease caused many of the deaths in the industrial revolution. This was due to the lack of hygiene, and little knowledge of sanitation and how disease spread. There was also very little known about curing most diseases. Diseases such as cholera, typhoid and typhus could be devastation. As pollution became worse - so did these issues. Cholera was a greatly feared disease at this time do to the easy contamination of water and food. Britain was hit by an outbreak in 1831-1832, 1848-1849, 1854 and 1867. Cholera is sudden and painful but not always fatal. It usually occurred in the poorer areas of city though the rich didn't always escape. It was said that people had a 50% chance of dying if they were to catch it. Smallpox was also in the industrial revolution although there was a cure that could be suede to the high populations in the city, the smallpox cure was drowned out along with many other tales because no one took the cure seriously. Typhoid and typhus were also just as popular as cholera. They were both found in city as there were many cases of each. Tuberculosis was the worst killer of all. The lungs were attacked in this case and the immune system tried to protect itself by creating tubercles which made the lung become spongy, yellow and deadly. TB affected people that were undernourished , or that lived in damp or dirty homes. It spread easily as all it took was for it to be inhaled by others. in Britain, it was believed that in between 1800-1850s, that 1/3 of the population was killed due to this disease. People originally thought that disease was spread through bad smells and poisoned clouds which wasn't the case. One example was when croydon swept through the towns in England and contaminated the water but there were no smells to trace so they couldn't find it. Edwin Chadwick also believed this smell theory and insisted on the sewers to be cleaned to get ride of the smell. Every week 6,000 cubic yards of filth were swept into River Thames, their main source of water. Cholera was then given the chance to spread killing at least half of the people as that was their main source of drinking.

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