Prevention of Disease in the 18th & 19th Century (Edexcel GCSE History): Revision Note

Improvements in disease prevention in the 19th century - Timeline & Summary

• The Industrial Revolution made industrial towns overcrowded, filthy, and perfect for disease to spread

  • Back-to-back housing for workers was dangerous and unhygienic

  • Multiple households shared one communal toilet

  • Neighbourhood water pumps increased the chance of contamination

• The government slowly abandoned laissez-faire attitudes and began protecting people’s health

  • More people could vote after the Great Reform Act (1832)

    • Improving public health would win votes from the newly enfranchised

  • Campaigners like Edwin Chadwick presented evidence of how bad public health was

  • Public Health Acts forced local councils to improve living conditions

• Vaccination became a powerful new method of prevention, thanks to Edward Jenner

Jenner & vaccinations

Smallpox in the 18th century

What was smallpox?

• Smallpox is an illness which causes a fever and pus-filled rashes across the body

• Smallpox killed 30% of victims

Inoculation

• A method to prevent smallpox was inoculation

  • An inoculator rubbed pus from a smallpox scab into a cut or crushed a scab for the patient to snort up their nose

• Inoculation was:

  • Expensive, so many could not pay for their services

  • Dangerous, as some patients died from the inoculation process 

The development of vaccinations

• Jenner noticed dairymaids who had cowpox never caught smallpox

• In 1796, Jenner tested this theory on a young boy called James Phipps

  • He did not catch smallpox

• He published An Enquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variola Vaccinae (1798)

  • The term ‘vaccination’ comes from the Latin ‘vacca’ for cow

Reactions to vaccinations

Government reaction

• The British government preferred vaccination to inoculation

  • It was much safer

  • It was cheaper because people did not need to go into quarantine

• The government passed a series of laws

  • 1840: Inoculation was banned, with taxes paying for the free vaccination of children

  • 1852: Smallpox vaccination made compulsory for children up to 3 months old

  • 1871: Doctors received payment to vaccinate

  • 1872: Parents were fined if they refused vaccination

Short-term impacts of the smallpox vaccine

• By 1800, 100,000 people had been vaccinated

• The Church and inoculators opposed vaccines

• Vaccinators made mistakes

  • Patients died of infection because they reused needles

Long-term impacts of the smallpox vaccine

• By 1979, the World Health Organisation declared that smallpox had been eradicated

• Jenner's work inspired other scientists like Pasteur and Koch to develop vaccines

  • Jenner’s method did not work for any other diseases except for smallpox

• Some people hated being forced to be vaccinated

The development of vaccines

Pasteur

• In 1879, Pasteur worked on a vaccine for chicken cholera. He:

  • Identified the germ causing the disease

  • Produced a weaker version of the disease

  • Treated his patient with the weaker version

• Pasteur used this method to create vaccines for anthrax and rabies

• Pasteur was unaware that a weaker version of a disease encourages the immune system to create antibodies

  • These antibodies then fight off the disease if the patient catches it again

Koch

• Koch discovered the microbes that caused disease

  • Emil von Behring used Koch’s research to create vaccines for tetanus and diphtheria

Government action to improve public health

Edwin Chadwick

• Wrote Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Classes (1842)

  • Chadwick linked life expectancy to living standards

    • People living in cities died much younger than those living in the countryside

  • Chadwick proposed:

    • Boards of Health

    • Sewage disposal

    • Clean water supplies

• The government ignored him at first

  • However, after Pasteur proved that clean water was vital for health, the government acted

The Public Health Acts

Public Health Act (1848)

• This Act encouraged cities to:

  • Set up boards of health

  • Provide clean water

• It was not compulsory for local authorities to follow the act

  • This limited the impact the Act had on the health of the nation

Public Health Act (1875)

• This act made it compulsory for local authorities to:

  • Provide clean water

  • Dispose of waste properly

  • Build public toilets

  • Hire a public officer of health to monitor where epidemics of disease occurred

  • Build new houses with better ventilation and check lodging houses were safe

  • Provide parks for exercise

• The government fined authorities that failed to comply

• By the end of the 19th century, the government had abandoned their laissez faire attitude