Medicine in the Nineteenth Century

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‘the poor were improvident, they wasted any money they had on drink and gambling’;

‘God had put people in their place in life and this must not be interfered with because the life after death was more important’

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The Poor Law Amendment Act Of 1834

In the act it was decreed that external relief for the poor was to be stopped within two years, leaving these unfortunates with the choice of the workhouse or starvation. No able-bodied person was to receive money or any other help from the poor law authorities except in a workhouse. The legislation had been designed to root out the "undeserving poor".

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In the first half of the century the medical world was raising the expectation that treatment of the body could become as exact a science as knowledge of the body. Throughout the land, much money and energy was being devoted to medical care and its study. Between 1801 and 1850 more university-educated men entered the profession in Great Britain (over eight thousand) than in all of previous history.

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The number of practitioners was well keeping pace with the enormous growth in population. This same period saw a continuing expansion of hospital facilities. Over seventy special hospitals were founded between 1800 and 1860, among them the London Fever Hospital, the Kensington Children¹s Hospital, and the Free Cancer Hospital, Fulham. At the beginning of the century, hospitals in England and Wales were accommodating only an average of three thousand patients; fifty years later the number had grown to eight thousand.

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London Fever Hospital

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The hospitals were providing not only more room for patients, but also expanded opportunities for the training of doctors. Especially after 1815, when the Apothecaries Act made mandatory for apprentices a half-year¹s experience in an infirmary, hospital, or dispensary, hospital surgeons began routinely to assume teaching duties and the larger teaching hospitals were inundated by students. These places became important centres for the study of morbid anatomy when, with the Anatomy Act of 1832, all unclaimed bodies were sent to them for dissection.

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Anatomy Act 1832