What Was Healthcare Like In The 1800s Research Paper

During the 1800s, physicians practiced various medical techniques, such as homeopathy and herbalism, while some physicians invented new techniques, like Electrotherapy. In the early 1800s, physicians relied on the "heroic" medicines for their medical treatments. Physicians classified the "heroic" medicines as treatments that would clean impurities from the body like purgation or bleeding by cup or by leech. For the people and physicians who did not agree with the "heroic" medicine, the development of other medical practices allowed them to deviate from the practices of the "heroic" medicines. Elaine G. Breslaw states in What Was Healthcare Like in the 1800s? "...not all people accepted this “heroic” medicine. The result was a proliferation

What Was Healthcare Like in the 1800s states that "During the colonial era, most American doctors were trained in Europe or had been apprenticed to those who had. They followed procedures that were universally acceptable and fairly moderate. Letting nature heal and the amelioration of symptoms had become hallmarks of the best trained", (Breslaw). So in that time, Americans and Europeans had similar opinions and outlooks on the medical field, but, in the 1800s, the opinions on the medical profession began to differ by quite a bit between the Americans and the Europeans. In America, after independence, the character of the physician changed, and Americans quit traveling to Europe to study and were therefore alienated from the ideas of the Europeans. Americans were focusing mainly on the "heroic" medicines and Europeans sought to improve their medicines. While Europeans partook in the use of science for their medical advancement, the Americans rejected the idea of science and denied that medicine and science were in anyway connected, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. ridiculed the idea that science would have any practical value in the medical profession