Outbreak! Plagues That Changed History by Bryn Barnard Read Free Book Online Page A

government should act to create “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” He argued that better living conditions would allow poor people to work harder and be less of a burden on society. Chadwick was also a miasmist. He declared that “all smell is disease.” Get rid of the smell, Chadwick reasoned, and you get rid of the disease. He recommended improved housing, paved streets, clean drinking water, flush toilets, and efficient sewers for everyone. Opponents called this “mawkish philanthropy,” but after years of bickering and thousands more cholera deaths, Parliament began to implement Chadwick’s reforms with the first Public Health Act of 1848. The Window Tax was repealed in 1851. The third cholera pandemic started in 1853, killing fifteen thousand people in England alone. It helped spur the Sanitary Act of 1866, the second Public Health Act of 1872, and the third Public Health Act of 1875.

Check out the apron on that guy
    Just as important as Chadwick in the prevention of cholera was Ignaz Semmelweis’s advocacy of hand washing. In 1846, Semmelweis was a Hungarian obstetrician working in Vienna. It is hard to believe now, but in those days even well-off Europeans rarely washed their hands. No wonder: not all homes or businesses had piped-in water, and hot water had to be heated on a stove. With knowledge of microbial pathogens still in the future, the need for regular, systematic hand washing wasn’t understood. Semmelweis, however, pointed out that women who gave birth with midwives (or even on the street) had amuch better chance of survival than those who delivered their babies in crowded hospitals, where doctors worked ungloved and wore the same attire throughout the day. For surgeons, bloody aprons were a sign of professional prowess—the redder the better. Semmelweis suggested that physicians were passing a fatal “something” from sick and newly dead patients to healthy mothers. Although doctors were incensed at the accusation that they were contagious, Semmelweis ordered his subordinates to wash their hands in chlorinated water before entering his wards. The maternal death rate dropped from 30 percent to 1 percent. The Semmelweis technique spread from hospitals to businesses, schools, and homes as a cheap, effective way to stop illness. It still is.

     
    Ignaz Semmelweis introduced modern hand washing into his maternity wards. He dropped the death rate from thirty out of a hundred to one.
     
    Though the Chadwick reforms and the Semmelweis method improved urban life expectancy and helped curb cholera, the disease remained a huge health problem. In 1854, a London physician named John Snow noticed that in Soho many cholera deaths were concentrated around the Broad Street public pump. To see if water pollution was the cause, he removed the handle so that the pump could not be used. Neighborhood cholera deaths plummeted. Eventually Snow compiled a detailed survey of the many competing companies that supplied water to London, each with its own overlapping systems of pipes. He conclusively connected cholera with the sewage-contaminated drinking water of one company, drawn downriver from London. More investigation showed that of London’s eight private water companies, only five filtered their water. (One customer found his pipes clogged by a rotting eel!) Snow was attacked for his ideas by miasma-obsessed sanitationists, who feared his focus on waterborne contagion would slow the cleanup of the English slums. But by 1902, London had merged its private water companies into a single municipal corporation that supplied everyone in the city with filtered, chlorine-treated water. Cholera and other waterborne diseases faded. Health improved.
    These changes were noted and copied elsewhere. In Germany, renowned pathologist Rudolph Virchow designed a new sewer system for Berlin. In the United States, Dr. John H. Griscom adapted Chadwick’s theme and title for his influential 1845 tract,
The Sanitary