Epidemiology: Choolera Heartbreak In The City Of London

In the summer of 1854, London was coming out as one of the most modern cities in the world. With nearly 2.4 million people living in the area at the time, the city’s infrastructure itself was having a hard time providing for the basic needs of its residents. The biggest problem existing within the city at that time was its waste removal system, or for better terms, its lack of one. Human waste was piling up everywhere, from people houses to the rivers and drinking water. This situation was the perfect breeding conditions for a number of diseases, and towards the end of that summer, one of the most deadly of them all took over. It took the work of both a physician and a local minister in order to discover the mysterious cause of the

During the pandemic of bubonic plague sanitation was at an all-time low. Cities suffered the greatest, with the disease spreading quickly. The lack of a safe system for waste disposal in these areas allowed for the disease to spread rapidly. The use of chamber pots was an example of the poor waste disposal. Chamber pots were small to medium sized bowls used for holding excretion. The contents of the chamber pots would then be tossed into the streets. Both sides of the streets were lined with trenches that would hold the human waste and other garbage; this became the perfect opportunity for disease to flourish. “Almost everyone used privies or chamber pots, which were emptied into open sewers that typically fed into streams, creeks, or adjacent rivers” (Streich). Not only was the filth repulsive in smell, but it also carried other airborne diseases which weakened the immune system thus a more catastrophic impact on the peasants.

In the book The Ghost Map, cholera was going into a massive outbreak in London during 1854. The story begins as one of the characters, baby Lewis, Contracts cholera, and when the mother washes diapers and cleans for the baby, she throws the water into the street. This leads to the outbreak. While the Board of Health believed the smell of the city was the cause of the outbreak, there was another citizen who believed otherwise. Henry Whitehead was a doctor who began to specialize in anesthesiology. Meanwhile, John Snow was researching his own theories, and he worked his way through the city to locate where high volumes of people were dying. While he was doing his research he began making a map, and he graphed where people were dying. Each house

In the early 19th Century the vast majority of housing for the working class was in a terrible condition, which were mainly due to overcrowding, poor ventilation and unsanitary environments. These issues lead to outbreaks of cholera on a number of occasions between the years 1813 and 1865. The Public Health Act was introduced in 1848, which required all local authorities to provide towns with hygienic sewage disposal and clean water supplies. Due to the presence of disease in slums, the Sanitary Reform Act was introduced in 1866. The act gave local authorities powers to inspect the cleanliness of homes in their district. (Naidoo and Wills, 2009). As stated by Berridge, Martin and Mold (2011), the Sanitary Reform Act aimed to address the problems with sewage, household waste and contaminated

Public health may have remained a pool of disease was it not for the reforms made in the middle ages Though the town authorities tried their best, London was probably the most unsanitary town in England. Slowly, however, rules were made and enforced. In 1301 four women butchers were fined for throwing the blood and guts of slaughtered animals into the street. By 1370, 12 teams of 'muck' collectors combed the streets for animal and human excrement - money could be made out of it by selling it to local farmers (which helped further spread the various diseases…)

The tenements where immigrants lived were unacceptably tiny and unsanitary. The East Side was packed at the rate of 290,000 per square mile at one point, while the greatest crowding of Old London was at the rate of 175,816 (12). Due to this overpopulation, diseases spread rapidly and killed thousands of unprotected tenants. Tenements also lacked fresh air because they did not have windows, which contributed to the fast advancement of cholera until around 1869 (14). One of the homes that Riis visited had “half a dozen persons washing, cooking, and sorting rags, lay

They could have been doing normal everyday things putting their friends and family in danger without even knowing that they were which increased the amount of people in contact with the disease. The streets were filthy and put off an awful smell; this was because waste was dumped out of windows onto the street. This caused very unsanitary living conditions.. Most were afraid to go around anyone with the disease; they locked themselves up in their houses afraid because it was

These influential public servers attempted to sterilize cities, which were overcrowded and filled with human feces. Surprisingly some countries such as the United States, realized that the fault of inadequate public health was due to the governments of the country. Exceptionally, Chadwick and other influencers in England instituted one of the first public health laws. With the increase of public health laws, it was understood that people will not fall ill or perish; since the health laws created a decrease in pollution and spread of diverse epidemics. Also, transportation became more advanced and modern and influenced how much people traveled.

On the other end of the society scale, the working poor were working and living in unbearable conditions. There were no irrigation systems, running water or any way of preserving hygiene in the homes or the factories. The working poor lived in slums and tenements which were breeding grounds for diseases. In the book, “The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844” by Friedrich Engels, he states, “...at the end of the covered passage, a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement.” (page 78)1. This gives us a peek into the horrible unsanitary conditions that the working class were forced to endure while the business owners were living in beautiful mansions and summer houses.

Ultimately, the week of the Broad Street outbreak impacted the ways cities organized themselves. Solutions for problems such as cholera helped urbanization in advancing sanitation standards. The Great Stink of 1858 forced authorities to confront the

Sewage would only worsen the issues of the Victorian Era making it terribly inferior to many citizens of London. Hospitals were not the only problem because the disposal of waste might have been just as evenly bad. “How to dispose of the accumulated waste was a problem that preoccupied the minds of countless reformers, engineers, scientists, and amateur sanitarians, but the problem acquired a particular urgency because the retention of waste in the city was associated with disease and even death…” (Cleansing the City p. 9-10). Many places in London had terrible sewage issues and it became evident that the sewage was so bad because no one knew how to dispose of the waste. The waste was very dangerous and many people did not want to deal with it due to the many diseases and bad liabilities carried with it. The nineteenth century needed a sanitary reform right away because in many places like London were being taken over and run by sanitation issues. “Together the two passages reveal the heightened symbolism of filth in the period and, more specifically, the way filth embodied the challenges of the urban condition. Indeed, sanitary discourse became an important vehicle for expressing concerns about the disorder associated with the Victorian city” (Cleansing the City p. 14). The following two passages the author is referring to are from Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens, an influential writer of the Victorian Era. London was literally demanding change because the sanitary reform

Diseases in Anglo-Saxon represent the irony of sanitization. There were various diseases that spread around England due to some reasons. Diseases that had great impact on people included various infections, parasites, Whip-worm, Maw-worm, fleas, Leprosy, Elf-shot, Wen, Shingles, Spider-bite, Dysentery and Hemorrhoids. These diseases were caused and spread because people were too fastidious. August was the time many people practiced cleanness and sanitization. However they were too fastidious that they were afraid of touching and cleaning their own mess. Therefore, many people just threw them to the river and let it flow. The river got contaminated and the people who drank the contaminated water got infected by virus of the water. Another reason was massive fleas and parasites which infected viruses from one person to another. http://stephswiki.wikispaces.com says, “One of the most popular sources of diseases was from wild rodents and flea. The poor couldn’t wash their clothes, have showers or do anything

‘widespread that the government had to act’. The personal outbreak and fear of another outbreak of cholera which took place again in 1837-38 forced the government to pass the first Public Health Act in 1848. Not only did this act bring in significant change it also allowed the establishment of local health boards which would build and maintain drains, sewers, toilets and supply fresh water to the citizens. If 10% of the population asked for a board or an area had a death rate of 23 per 1000 they would be forced to set up. These boards would also help with the cleaning of their local streets as well as inspecting businesses and running the burial grounds of their area. Often seen a significant for the first public provision of citizens

During the Middle Ages, towns were extremely unsanitary until physicians and people living in the towns began to discover the relationship between dirty towns and the spread of disease. Towns had become covered in human and animal waste, garbage, butchers’ scraps, and manure. Bacteria was constantly being spread because people bathed in, went to the bathroom in, and drank from the same water source. Even if towns had outhouses, they were sometimes built too close to the town’s water supply, causing the human waste to seep through the dirt into the water source. Monasteries were also very filthy places because they took care of sick people who were covered in dirt, fleas, lice, and wore dirty, unwashed clothes. Eventually, there became a basic understanding that cleanliness helped people maintain good health, even though there was no actual scientific proof.

At the same time, Britain became more industrialized, towns started to grow and became over populated especially factory towns. Houses in these factory towns were close together, and because of this the living conditions in these houses were overcrowded, damp and dirty. People ate, slept and cooked in the same places. There were no sewers so there was human waste everywhere, because of the