Introduction
Medical technology and practices in the 17 and 18 hundreds was very basic. Many surgeries were performed without anesthesia and often resulted in death from infection. Many technological advances were made in this time period that changed how diseases were treated, and how surgeries were performed. Medical practices changed forever in this time period.
Advances and Practices of the 1700s
In the 1700s medicine was very basic and most people did not live past the age of forty years old. Diseases such as Dysentery, smallpox, and influenza were rampant and caused death everywhere. Treatments for these diseases were nonexistent, because the knowledge needed to create cures was not there. People at this time did not know what caused disease, they only saw the symptoms and did not know how to treat them. Many surgeries at this time resulted in death. This was due to poor sanitation in operating rooms. Surgeries were also incredibly painful due to the lack of anesthesia. One 1712 surgeon's manual said that the best way to perform an amputation was to quickly chop with a curved blade and quickly cover the stump with the remaining skin. The only major advance of the 1700s was the smallpox vaccine invented in 1796 by Edward Jenner. Medical practices in this time were very crude, but in the 1800s they would improve drasticaly.
1800s
Medical practices improved drastically throughout the 19th century. Many important inventions such as the X-ray, blood transfusion, and anesthesia changed medicine forever. Some inventions of this time period have gone completely unchanged such as the invention of the world's most widely consumed drug, aspirin. Life expectancy in the mid 1800s was around 45, however this figure may have been effected by the U.S. Civil War. The Civil war was an exception to the medical advances of the 1800s. Conditions in field hospitals were horrible. The nurses tried to help in any way possible, but lacked the proper training to care for wounded soldiers. Many soldiers never returned home due to death from infection and disease. Medicine in the 1800s evolved greatly. In the early 1800s medical technology was still very basic and crude. Many people did not live past the age of 30. By the end of the 1800s however, Medical practices were starting to resemble some modern practices and technology.