Victorian Medecine

Victorian Medecine (1837-1901) and the Founding Hospital : Summary

When Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, medicine was a world away from what it is today. The cure that doctors and pharmacists were providing to make people better seem quite surprising to us today.

Throughout the Victorian era, pharmacists were experimenting; it was a period during which the medical profession made great advancements. Some of the progress we have made in modern medicine can be – at least in part – attributed to some of the discoveries made by the Victorians.

These great medecine achivements not only contributed to a progress in the domain of hospitals, but also had a great impact on social life: whereas new jobs were involved, people were changing their habits to cure themselves and lived longer allowing the growth of the country.  Moreover, the Victorian era allowed medical instruments (such as scalpels, microscope lenses, test tubes, and other equipment) to be produced more quickly. Hospitals, as far as they were concerned, were spreading all over the country like the speed of light.

It is also important to add that most of the diseases at the time were deadly (such as Cholera, Typhoid or Scarlet fever) since vaccination was not a very famous process. During Victorian times, Middle-class men were expected to live to about 45 and workmen and labourers maybe around half of that time. Children reaching the age of 5 were lucky, due to lack of vaccination. It was a common belief that diseases were caused by bad smells. Since poor districts had a bad smelling air and a high date compared to rich suburbs with no smells and so no disease.

Last but not least, it is essential to mention all the important people who contributed to the glory of this era such as maybe the most famous one, Queen Victoria, but also Ronald Ross a British doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on malaria and James Joung Simpson who became famous for his discovery of the anaesthetic qualities of chloroform.