Health In The 19th Century Essay

The impact of key social, political and scientific developments on health status in Britain.

In this paper the major causes of death in the 19th century are going to be compared with the major causes of death to date. This is going to be done by showing what people in the 19th century thought about disease and how they fought against it comparing to how Britain fights disease and illness in the 20th century. This paper will then focus on how urbanisation and industrialisation have affected developments on health status and will be linking this to how sanitation reforms have developed over the century leading to the discovery of vaccination.

In the 19th century the population of Britain suffered from infectious diseases such as Tuberculosis, Typhoid, Smallpox, Diphtheria and others. These diseases were thought to have been caused by the ‘miasmas’ within the air causing bad smells, although living in the cramped conditions of back-to-back housing and sharing of privies were the prime breeding ground for illness and spread of disease. The diseases of the 19th century that caused major death rates were the cholera epidemic in 1832 killing over 21,000 people and ‘Spanish flu’, also known as influenza, a pandemic in the early 20th century killing an estimate of 250,000 (Anon., 2005) just in Britain. The main reason behind Diseases spreading in this era was the fact

This lead to the environments of working class families being overcrowded, living conditions of such often led to unwholesome marriage, immorality, crime and unhealthy sanitation (Anon., n.d.). Industrialisation of Britain saw more and more cities being developed with back-to-back housing built in the smallest possible space, these houses were occupied by the working class that needed to be close to the factories for