From 1880-1920, immigration to America created wide spread diseases and created a problem for many hospitals. Since every one was living within close quarters, waste disposal was not up to par along with purified drinking water. Sewage and plumbing was not very prominent, and washing your hands was a small victory in the transmittance of disease. Examples such as the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital operated a massive medical service to that such disease of cholera would not spread across the country. This was not the case. Symbols of various diseases at the hospital were placed on immigrants clothing using chalk, and they only entered the country through wiping off and concealing the chalk and thus having a greater threat to public health. If the germs of cholera or any other disease were in the city, the contagion ended up being spread to hundreds of families even if they lived in a clean environment. This issue of disease created a trend that is associated with urbanization and urban life. Heavy urbanization caused medicine to evolve in the way that doctors were trained, and the type of training that they received.
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The need for substantial doctors were prompted when they did not have proper medical schools and training. Before actual medical schools were established, no undergraduate training was necessary for gaining a medical degree. They received training of two sixteen week courses with four daily lectures. The future doctors took many classes including anatomy, physiology, medical jurisprudence, and principles of practice and surgery. After they saw this outlook on education disdainful, they established salaried, properly educated professors in place of practitioners. A three year graded course with exams and lab teaching of basic science was executed. After 1890, the American Association of Medical Colleges were reconstituted. Johns Hopkins was the fist and firmest medical school established, and it created a better constitution of medical schools, and the reconstruction of doctors. Johns Hopkins was the first medical school to require an undergraduate degree, and only Harvard followed in 1901. After all of these medical schools were put into place, in 1910, the number of 160 medicals were declined to 85 after the Flexner Report. Abraham Flexner traveled to medical schools to review the medical education system. His reforms included laboratory and clinical practices becoming a requirement.
Many different types of medicine were being developed in the Middle Ages. The development of skills to deal with people, and science were used by performing the latest technological advances to enhance patient care. Along with the urbanization of America, the urbanization of surgery began to progress. Advancements in surgery were prominent. Even through surgery was limited, it progressed. The biggest problems of surgery during this time included pain, sepsis, Hemorrhaging, and post surgical shock. Many doctors tried to induce sleep throughout the surgery, but anesthesia was not perfected. The use of anesthesia had two functions, the function of eliminating pain and inducing a state of muscular relaxation in the patient. The pain tolerance was very low, and the only was to cure this was through some kind of anesthesia whether it be local anesthesia or sleep inducing drugs which were ineffective. They soon came to figure out that while on any anesthesia, you must regulate the patient, and have controlled respiration at all times.
The human heart is a machine that does not simply expand and contract, it has an element of torsion in the way that it operates. The waves of the heart spreads across its muscle to the next apex. Even in health, its rhythm constantly changes. It is the engine of life. Since the wages of factories and other jobs were very slim, many people turned to eating unhealthy. This caused a vast array of heart problems. The heart is the most important organ and many doctors in this time period were afraid to operate, as it creates many risks. In Stephen Pagets 1896 text, Surgery of the Chest, “surgery of the heart”, he declared, “ has probable reached the limit set by nature to all surgery: no new method, and no new discovery, can overcome the natural difficulties that attend a wound of the heart.” Heart surgery was very hard to due until the creation of the rib spreader in 1914.
During this time, many black physicians and other medical professionals were restricted. Freedmen’s was one of the few hospitals where black doctors could consult professional and practice the latest scientific methods. The racial and gender bias distorted clinical decision making. The American medical professions de facto policy of black exclusion became the official policy in the 1880’s as the profession wrote African Americas off as the “syphilis soaked” unfit race. The only medical institutions in America where Blacks were conceptualized as normal human beings were the post-civil war black medical schools and the few black hospitals and clinics. To everyone’s surprise, he performed the first successful open heart surgery in the United States. By the 1920’s the basis of racial segregation and class exclusivity was stratified and unequal. The only two black health care schools were Meharry Medical College and Howard University School of Medicine.
If it had not been for urbanization and heavy immigration, the evolution of medicine would have not increased to proper standards. It created a need for more hospitals, and the very important research of diseases. This type of urban living led to the issues that were problematic including the spread of disease, and the welfare of all future americans. Doctors still receive proper training today, and many of reforms prepared doctors for the medical crisis’ that happened in future generations. Without Abraham Flexner’s report ton medicine, hospitals would not be up to par, and even though mass urbanization created many hardships for America, it was beneficial to the American’s today.
Fong, Kevin. Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the
Twentieth Century. New York, NY 10011: Pinguin, 2012. Print.
Margotta, Roberto. The History of Medicine. New York: Reed International Unlimited,
1996. Print
Duke Timeline - used to show what medical tools were invented
The History of American Higher Education - I used this website to see the culture of works of medicine, and how medical schools worked
Leading the Race - This was used to show the effects of race on medicine.
An American Dilemma: Race, Medicine, and Health Care- This was used to show the effects of race on medicine.
New York Tribune - This used as a primary source to show people's perspective
The American Yawp - This was used for a primary source to show the Ellis Island Medical hospital
