Diseases and epidemics of the 19th century

Micro-organisms (viruses and bacteria) had been discovered in the 18th century, but it was not until the late 19th century that the experiments of Lazzaro Spallanzani and Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation conclusively, allowing germ theory and Robert Koch's discovery of micro-organisms as the cause of disease transmission.

[1] This included the first uses of chloroform and nitrous dioxides as anesthesia, important discoveries in regards of pathology and the perfection of the autopsy, and advances in our understanding of the human body.

[1] Medical institutions were also transitioning to new hospital styles to try to prevent the spread of disease and stop over crowding with the mixing of the poor and the sick which had been a common practice.

[1] So as those in authority scrambled to make leaps and bounds in science and track down what may be the cause of these epidemics, entire communities would be lost to the grips of terrible ailments.

[3] During the cholera epidemic of 1832, a doctor in London, Thomas Latta, discovered that he could greatly increase the survival rate of his patients by injecting saline solutions into their arms.

[3] However, due to the wide range of medicines being touted as cures and treatments, his technique failed to gain widespread adoption.

With the increasing circulation of mass media and little content review in medical journals, almost anyone with or without proper education could publish a potential cure for disease.

[3] Actual practicing medical professionals also had to compete with the ever expanding pharmacy companies that were all too ready to provide new elixirs and promising treatments for the epidemics of the time.

[4][5] The cholera bacterium was isolated in 1854 by Italian anatomist Filippo Pacini,[6] and a vaccine, the first to immunize humans against a bacterial disease, was developed by Spanish physician Jaume Ferran i Clua in 1885,[7] and by Russian–Jewish bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine in July 1892.

[10] During the first cholera epidemic, Edwin Chadwick made an inquiry into sanitation and used quantitative data to link poor living conditions and disease and low life expectancy.

The prevalence of the disease in the South in areas of black populations convinced United States scientists that cholera was associated with African Americans.

Current researchers note they lived near the waterways by which travelers and ships carried the disease and their populations were underserved with sanitation infrastructure and health care.

[13] The Soho outbreak in London in 1854 ended after the physician John Snow identified a neighborhood Broad Street pump as contaminated and convinced officials to remove its handle.

[citation needed] In London, in June 1866[15]), a localized epidemic in the East End claimed 5,596 lives, just as the city was completing construction of its major sewage and water treatment systems.

Prior to this time, many physicians believed that microorganisms were spontaneously generated, and disease was caused by direct exposure to filth and decay.

The bacteria multiply in the small intestine;[18] the feces (waste product) of an infected person, including one with no apparent symptoms, can pass on the disease if it contacts the water supply by any means.

[citation needed] The first cholera pandemic started in 1816, spread across India by 1820,[19] and extended to Southeast Asia and Central Europe, lasting until 1826.

It spread to Hungary, Germany and Egypt in 1831,[20] and London, Paris, Quebec, Ontario and New York City the following year.

In 1859, an outbreak in Bengal contributed to transmission of the disease by travelers and troops to Iran, Iraq, Arabia and Russia.

[41] The disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans annually during the 19th century and one-third of all the blindness of that time was caused by smallpox.

[citation needed] During Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812, more French soldiers died of typhus than were killed by the Russians.

In Canada alone, the typhus epidemic of 1847 killed more than 20,000 people from 1847 to 1848, mainly Irish immigrants in fever sheds and other forms of quarantine, who had contracted the disease aboard coffin ships.

The third pandemic of plague originated in this area after a rapid influx of Han Chinese to exploit the demand for minerals, primarily copper, in the latter half of the 19th century.

Increasing transportation throughout the region brought people in contact with plague-infected fleas, the primary vector between the yellow-breasted rat (Rattus flavipectus) and humans.

[55] Scarlet fever had several epidemic phases, and around 1825 to 1885 outbreaks began to recur cyclically and often highly fatal.

[53] A treatment would not be available until the introduction of sulphonamides in the 1930s, and the decline in mortality was due to the quality of air, food, and water improving.

[53] Outbreaks of scarlet fever also took place in Dublin in 1896 with 1,354 cases and 149 deaths, Norway from 1862 to 1884, Scotland in 1861, and in the rest of United Kingdom.

[58] In the early 19th century the scarlet fever impact drastically changed and lethal epidemics started to arise in the United States.

[58] The United States had a notable outbreak of scarlet fever in Minnesota in 1847[55] and Augusta, Georgia had a lethal epidemic in 1832–33.

[58] Scarlet fever had low mortality rates in New York for many years before 1828, but remained high for long after.