Illnesses Before The 19th Century

During the 1800s, there was several diseases affecting people left and right. “Diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, measles, chickenpox, cholera, whooping cough and influenza, among others” (“1800s: My Place, Diseases”) were some of the known diseases that would cripple or cause death to multiple people. Often Plantation owners and their slaves would have the same diseases, but plantation owners had a higher chance at surviving than slaves did. Doctors would prescribe the same treatment to anyone with a disease, usually natural herbs or bleeding out. Doctors from England that lived in America could no longer visit England for medical advice after the Revolutionary War, so several doctors started to improvise with many different remedies

The role of social workers in international scene has become more significant as their competencies become just as in demand. The proliferation of local social problems has spread internationally while globalization continuously changes every aspect of human life. For this reason, North America social workers must be alarmed if their current expertise matches with the demand of international concerns.

Epidemics of the 19th century were faced without the improved medical technologies that made the 20th and 21st-century epidemics rare and less lethal. It was in the 18th century that micro-organisms (viruses and bacteria) were discovered, but it was not until the late 19th century that the experiments of Lazzaro Spallanzani and Louis Pasteur disagreed with the spontaneous generation argument conclusively, crediting the germ theory and Robert Koch 's discovery of micro-organisms as the cause of disease transmission. Therefore, throughout the majority of the 19th century, there was only the most basic, understanding of the causes, amelioration and treatment of epidemic disease.

The purpose of the social work profession is to help all persons who are in need of service, whether they are being discriminated against, are impoverished, or are defenseless in the face of crises. The actions of social workers have dated back hundreds of years before the profession was even in existence. In the past hundred years there have been numerous men and women who have shown great courage in helping the less fortunate; these men and women have sacrificed themselves for the needs and service of others. One man in particular forever changed New York City and the profession of social work, Charles Loring Brace.

In the 19th century, scientists developed new technology such as the microscope, which enabled them the ability to see the unseen disease-causing organisms. This allowed them them to treat diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, yellow fever, anthrax and many more infectious diseases. Before the germ theory arose, most people believed that disease was a form of punishment from gods for when they behaved badly, whilst many others believed in the Miasma Theory, a disease being caused by a miasma in the air; a poisonous vapour in which suspended particles of decaying matter gave a bad smell. The miasma theory was very highly accepted by society as they were able to prove that the disease rate decreased when they drained the foul-smelling sewers

I am doing my field at the Hospice in Greenville, NC. I concur that as social specialists we have numerous moral commitments. Social workers, have the skill in breaking down, affecting, and executing strategy change and advancement at nearby, state, and government levels that can be utilized to make important upgrades under the watchful eye of patients living with life-constraining sickness and the withering. Herman (2012) found that social work specialists can advance the calling by improving their palliative and hospice aptitude, instructing buyers and their associates about the social work part of interdisciplinary palliative and hospice groups. Social laborers can lead and elevate research to show the estimation of social work instruction and preparing inside hospice and palliative care, and upholding on authoritative and state levels (Herman,

The first Cholera epidemic in England appeared in October of 1831. Symptoms of Cholera include dehydration, diarrhea, fever, and vomiting. Soon the disease would take over the patient's body and kill them. The second epidemic took place in 1848 through 1849 and killed almost 70,000 people throughout England and Wales. Doctors could not figure out the source of the illness or how to cure it. The living conditions made this illness spread like wildfire. People were living in cramped living areas and did not have proper sewage systems. Human waste was thrown into ditches and alleyways. When the city would flood the sewage would flow into houses, marketplaces, streets, and eventually made its way into streams and the Thames river. Doctor

Rooting back to the middle ages the now commonly known Huntington’s disease is the cause of death in one out of 15000 people around the globe. The disease’s existence is documented through history under many different names depending on the amount of information that was gathered through the unusual progression of the disease. The disease was referred to as Chorea initially due to the jerky movements of the patients affected by it. The first thorough description of the disease surfaced in 1872 as George Huntington whom the disease is named after today presented a detailed definition of the disease through his first paper. George Huntington was able to accurately detect the pattern of inheritance of an autosomal dominant disease by examining the combined medical histories of a family that clearly suffered from the disease through generations. The disease could not be studied further until the rediscovery of the Mendelian Inheritance in the 20th century that allowed scientist to look further into the autosomal dominant disease.

Miasma, or “bad air,” is once thought to cause cholera during the cholera epidemic of the 19th century (Cholera epidemics in the 19th century, n.d.). Epidemiologist John Snow disproved the widely popular miasma belief and cholera is now understood to be an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae (Tuthil, 2003). V. cholerae is a Gram-negative, monotrichous bacillus bacterium. Epidemic cholera can only be caused by two serogroups, serogroups O1 and serogroup O139 Vibrio cholerae (Finkelstein, 1996). Cholera is transmitted by the fecal-oral route through the ingestion of food or water contaminated with V. cholerae. Advanced water and sewage treatments have eliminated the spread of cholera in industrialized countries such as the United States.

The spread of cholera was greatly facilitated during the nineteen century due to the lack of public waste management systems, like sewage systems and garbage disposal systems. The Ghost Map and the visit to the New York Academy of Medicine broadened my knowledge of the outbreaks of cholera in London and New York. Night-soil men in London had to remove overflowing of human feces from the basements of civilians because there was not a better means of disposal for the waste during that period of time. Deplorable sanitary on street corners and overflowing of garbage cans in New York elevated the cholera epidemic. As a result of this unsanitary behavior in both countries, water became contaminated and thus increase the spread of cholera. However,

A Report on the Problems Affecting Public Health in 1830-1848 There were major problems affecting public health in 1830-1848. There were many factors which contributed to the terrible state of the British population’s health. This report comments specifically on the problems affecting public health in Britain in 1830-1848 and contributes the reasons social reform was so necessary during this time.

Three thousand years ago, people recognized that they had a moral obligation to help those in need. Looking back on the history of social work, there have been many definitions of the field, but it is ever-changing and expanding to include the things that happen in society every day. The 1800’s were a defining period of time for social welfare and the field of social work was born. For the time, there was such progressive acts stemming from many factors affecting the United States including a population increase, both here in the U.S. and in terms of immigration. The textbook lists a whole page of the programs and organizations enacted in the 1800’s, and among them were the child labor laws that passed in 1836 in Boston, the first look into services provided to “insane people” in 1841 (Berg-Weger, 26), the first mental asylum opened in Trenton, New Jersey in 1845, and, when “mentally deficient” (Berg-Weger, 26) people were able to obtain public education in Providence Rhode Island in 1896. Social work has gone from being strictly volunteer work to being an accredited, multidimensional field. Today, we still have some of those same programs, and we have added others, and use them as stepping stones because social work is ever-changing to accommodate all important issues and information of an ever-changing population. We are now working to assist everyone from older adults, to children, to military veterans. All of this progress wouldn’t have been possible without the pioneers

In the early days hospital were concerned a way of protecting the public, it was not a place of care, more like a morgue to store individual that was deemed unfit to live with the normal human population. They were placed well outside the city limits. Outside of a caretaker that was little to no help for the patient other than being used as an experimental guinea pig. As the years passed and the population begin to grow healthcare began to separate the mental illness and storing them in a separate small building called a strong house. In the 19th century, there was no known protocol for taking care of the sick. The Protestant nursing movement began in Germany and was brought to Pennsylvania in 1850 (Jones and Bartlett). Making provision for

Public health and disease prevention has been growing concern in this country, beginning with the influx of immigrants in the eighteenth century. Since that time, the policies and areas of concern have evolved and transitioned from quelling outbreaks to individual preventive care.

Social work is a vast field with complex and numerous factors that can create confusion on what exactly the social work profession is. Many theories and values have been assigned to social work based scientific development and studies, assumptions and inherent beliefs, which can only add to the chaotic understanding of the profession. Although the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) was only founded in 1955, (Platt and Cooreman 2001, pg. 113) social work has been utilized for centuries, including Henry VIII of England who passed an act mandating, “local parishes to take care of their destitute and create a procedure for the collection and administration of donations to the poor.” (Platt and Cooreman 2001, pg. 92). Discussed in the following is a more concrete definition of social work along with core values needed to be acquired to support the practice of social work effectively.