Early Victorian Era Medical Practices
Bloodletting in the Victorian Era was a technique used to get rid of as early Victorian citizens called it "Bad Blood". This process was started by putting a leech on the infected area to suck the blood out or using the "artificial leech". This was a tool made to take the place of the leech by puncturing the skin and causing blood to constantly seep from the skin.(Fun Fact: Doctors let their patients do this bleeding process until their patients fainted from blood loss!).
Amputation before the discovery of antiseptic's were a very painful process. Doctors would have to use scalpels to cut through the soft tissue and a saw to cut the bone of the limb. Doctors often knocked their patients out using chloroform before the procedure or gave their patient any type of alcohol to drink in order to deaden the pain in some way.
All practices that were named earlier were advocated by the man above.
As the advancement of medicine continued it also branched off into a area of religion called quackery. This religion instead of using what was made by people to heal people believed that if they prayed enough for one person god would come to heal them. Even now this belief is continued rarely in many places in the U.S.
The image on the left is an example of how people in the Victorian Era advertised their "potions" which were said to instantly heal anyone who drank them.
Antiseptic surgical procedures based on the practical application of Pasteur's laboratory work were developed by Joseph Lister (1827-1912) using carbolic acid (phenol) from 1869 in Edinburgh and in 1877 in London. Aseptic procedures followed, involving sterilization of whole environments
Blistering was created with the belief that one could burn the infection out of the body by putting a blister on the infected area.
Purging was the patient regurgitating multiple times until the sickness was said to leave the body, by expelling toxic fluids.
The “sweating process” is the process is to be a way to rid a patient of a fever, this process would be put into action by pouring cold water onto the patient and giving them a massage, this process was said to make the patient sweat out the illness from the body.
Before the discovery of antiseptic alcohol or chloroform was the best a doctor could manage to reduce the pain for a patient when performing a serious operation.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jDNI7HChdMwZrrNb184ZEtEo6LfYIZ5qqwUc9F-lLnY/edit?usp=sharingKrauss, D. (1996, November 1). Medical Madness: Practice's of the Victorian Era. Retrieved October 18, 2014, from http://www.morbidoutlook.com/nonfiction/articles/2004_06_medical.html
Floyd, B. (n.d.). From Quackery to Bacteriology: The emergence of modern medicine in the 19th Century America: An Exhibition. Retrieved October 18, 2014, from o http://www.utoledo.edu/library/canaday/exhibits/quackery/quack1.html
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