THE FATHER OF EPIDEMIOLOGY
In 1831 cholera made its first appearance in England. The first symptom of cholera was nausea, followed by stomach ache, vomiting and diarrhoea so profuse that it caused victims to die of dehydration. When a major breakthrough came in 1854, the British physician John Snow (1813-58) demonstrated that infection was not spread by miasmas – bad smells arising from sewers, garbage pits and other foul-smelling sites of organic decay.
SURGERY AND ANAESTHESIA
Methods for reducing the sensation of pain during surgery date back to ancient times. Before the 19th century, when patients needed surgery for illness or injury, they had to rely on alcohol, opium (a natural narcotic derived from the opium poppy) or fumes from an anaesthetic-soaked cloth in order to lessen the pain of the surgeon’s knife. A group of men used to hold the patient down during an operation in case the opium or alcohol wore off. Under these conditions, a lot of patients died of shock caused by the pain itself.