Public Health and Nineteenth-Century Literature Essay

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

These public health disasters were related to the congested and unsanitary food supply, sewage disposal,

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…)

It is hard to imagine in the twenty first century the level of filth that was experienced in the 1830’s on a daily basis. Sanitation, public health and sewer systems were problems that gripped the nation throughout the ninetieth century (1830-1860s), encouraging popular debate and proposal of changes. The growth of population and increase in the industry

In American industrial cities, late 1800s, Poor neighborhood were not the best place to live. With poor living conditions, poor sanitation and crowded housing, many epidemics of infectious disease spread into the poor population and touched even the wealthy class. Cities such as New York were crowded and workers were living in tenements, which were often cramped, poorly lit and poorly aerated. Moreover, these tenements lacked of adequate plumbing, therefore waste was flooding in the public streets. Streets was crowded of waste and garbage. Population was poorly nourished and has a poor life hygiene like water pollution and poisoned food and milk. Accordingly, infectious disease was the common death reason. Big cities had known outbreaks of

Firstly, access to medical care. Years ago medical care in the 19th century was not very good. The hospitals were very basic, many beds in a large room (ward) there were very rarely curtains around the beds for privacy because in those days clothes were short and extra material would be made into clothing. Also, they may not have been very clean, they were hygienic to work in but for people that were very ill they may of made that person more poorly. Clinics were similar; they had the basic bed to check patients on and the small amount of medicines. Not all the time did they have the correct suitable medication for patients. So some patients may have had to suffer for longer than what they should off because it was hard to get medication that was going to cure

This report recommended that the government should organise proper drainage and refuse collection, provide a pure water supply and appoint a Medical Officer of Health. However, these changes were not implemented until thirty years later when Parliament finally agreed. There were a number of reasons why the government's view of health conditions in towns changed in the 1870's. The health in towns was still very bad and there were a number of cholera epidemics, including the famous one where Dr. John Snow linked cholera to polluted water. In 1861, Pasteur proved that germs cause decay.

In the very first chapter, Steven Johnson begins to set the scene of how the overpopulation of London coupled with extreme levels of poverty created the perfect opportunity for Cholera to spread in the rapid manner that it did. On page one it states; “These were the London underclasses, at least a hundred thousand strong. So immense were their numbers that had the scavengers broken off and formed their own city, it would have been the fifth-largest in all of England.” Johnson mentions that the city of London had become a city of Scavengers, consisting of; bone-pickers, pure-finders, dredgermen, sewer-hunters and night-soil men. However, the harshest reflection of the Cholera epidemic of 1854 is conveyed by John Snow himself. On page 59 it states; “The young Snow observed

In comparing the differences between 19th, 20th and 21st century, the living conditions in the 19th century caused so many deaths. This is because health was very poor and people went through many health issues such as poor and over-crowded housing which caused the rapid spread of diseases, pollution and poor environment as people were

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

Many people working had very poor living conditions. Friedrich Engels describes the England streets, the slums, ¨...unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn with refuse.”and their rivers as ¨...coal-black and full of stinking filth and rubbish…(Document 9)¨ It wasn't just bad at their homes it was also bad at their work. Joseph Hebergam was a man who had been working at one of the many mills that had horrible working conditions. Working in these horrible conditions Joseph was told he would die within the year of 1832 because he had a severe illness. When asked how he got the illness he responded with, ¨He (the doctor) told me it was caused by the dust in the factories and from overwork and insufficient diet...¨ People just did not die because of an illness they also died from infections. These mills were working their workers to

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.

Another thing that was happening in the 1830s was the religious and cultural practices and the forbidden conducts; during this period it was notable that people were quarantine for epidemics, sexual prohibitions to minimize illness spread and dietary restrictions to minimize nutrition illnesses. The hygiene movement (1840 – 1870) brought, the sanitary conditions as the foundation for improvement. The contagion control (1880 – 1940) in which immunology and outbreak investigations began. Between the 1950s and mid-1980s, the

In England during the industrial revolution there was a lot of poverty and pollution, especially in the main towns where the mass unemployment and people often had to go into the work houses. The conditions that they were made to work in were overcrowded. There was no sanitation or anywhere to clean, and there was a large amount of pollution. These all led to diseases among the workers. Some of the jobs that the children were made to do were chimney sweeping or selling matches. Adults had to do bone crushing for fertilisers, working in kitchens and doing the laundry for rich people.