How Did The Germ Theory Influence The Victorian Era

Doctors influenced medicine in the Victorian Era by coming up with the germ theory, creating doctor specialists, and developing more technologically advanced equipment. The discovery of the germ theory influenced medicine drastically. Before the germ theory was developed in the Victorian Era, doctors did not believe diseases could be spread through the air or water. Doctors believed they were only spread through genes (Health and Medicine). There was also the Humoral Theory which stated if your four “main” fluids, black bile, red or yellow bile, blood, and phlegm, were off balance, then you would get sick (Humoral Theory). That was the main theory that was believed until the germ theory was discovered. The germ theory was discovered by Louis

Before that time, specialists didn’t really exist. Specialists started to emerge during the industrial revolution. Because of all the train injuries and sickness, a new specialty came out for doctors; they were called “railway doctors” (El-Hai). This became a specialty because if general doctors took in all the patients from train injuries, they wouldn’t have time for everyone else. Also, having doctors specialize, allowed them to diagnose conditions that a general doctor may not be able to. One of those would be railway spine. Railway spine was a condition just where your back would start hurting a lot, but before specialists, general doctors just thought patients were saying that to get attention( El-Hai). It wasn’t until specialists focused on railway spine that people knew it was a real condition. “One in every 28 railroad employees was injured on the job in 1900” (El-Hai). That is a lot of injuries, and without railway specialists, those people may not have had as good care as they would with a doctor who is trained in that field specifically. Besides railway specialists, specialists were usually meant for the wealthier people who could afford a doctor to come to their home. The other people who couldn’t afford a specialist, had to go to hospitals that were very unsanitary. Childbed fever was very common to women giving birth in a hospital, but was much less common to women giving birth at home (Duin). This

However, others were not so lucky. “Hospitals, rather than being seen as “places of healing” were more often viewed as “gateways of death” (Malheiro). The people who couldn’t afford a specialist or private doctor would have to go to a hospital. Nearly 80% of people who went into those hospitals ended up dying in there (Hunter). "In London, in 1830, the average lifespan for middle to upper-class males was 44 years, 25 for tradesman and 22 for laborers. Fifty-seven of every 100 children in working class families were dead by five years of age” (Hunter). The hospitals would be small and would be overcrowded due to the lack of space (Malheiro). Having specialists was helpful to the rich and allowed them to not need to go to hospitals, however, if you weren’t rich, specialists did no good to you. In the upper class, 136 newborns out of 1000 would die before they reached the age of one (Victorian Medicine). That is still a lot, however, compared to the middle to lower class citizens, that is not much at all. In the middle class, there were 274 infant deaths per 1000 births, and impoverished areas there was a horrifying 509 infant deaths per 1000 (Victorian Medicine). This shows how the wealthier had access to more qualified doctors and more sanitary areas rather than the people in lower to middle