Victorian Science

1. Victorian Science

2. Scientists • Charles Darwin: theory of natural selection • Thomas Edison: invented over a thousand ideas that transformed life in the late 19th century • Joseph Lister: informed everyone of the importance of keeping wounds & equipment clean during operations. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8WbrS0O5FE

3. Other People of Interest • Elizabeth Garrett Anderson: First woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain. • Florence Nightingale: Founder of modern nursing

4. Charles Darwin • The theory of evolution predates Darwin’s Origin of Species • Species of animal kingdom form a connected series, a graduated chain from the monad to man. • Darwin originated the idea of natural selection.

5. Devolution

6. Devolution • “Evolution is the development of an organism from its chemicals or primitive state to its present state. Devolution is the sequence toward greater simplicity or disappearance or degeneration.” • Devolution is basically the reverse of evolution.

7. Degeneration • Fear that, as humankind went through the process of natural selection, the “fittest” would survive, but not the “best.” • The battle in which “beautiful and humane and fine natures are driven to the wall by the small-minded, the mercenary, the rapacious, or more ruthlessly efficient.”

8. How Victorians Viewed Science • Medical students were caricatured in the press as drunken buffoons, and doctors were considered as likely to kill as they were to cure their patients.

9. Medicine Blood Transfusions • Blood transfusions in the Victorian period were dangerous, because blood-typing had not yet been discovered. • The process of the blood transfusion takes blood directly from the donor and puts it directly into the recipient by means of a pump of some kind.

10. Mesmerism • One person claimed to influence another through the movement of his hands near the surface of the other person’s body. • In the 19th Century, it became a widespread form of psychological experiment and medical therapy. • Public demonstrations were common

11. Mesmerism • Used on a man during his leg amputation. He claimed to have felt no pain. • Many people were horrified at the thought of someone having the ability to suspend another person’s sensations during surgery.

12. Anesthesia • Before anesthetics, patients had to withstand the pain • Alcohol • Opiates • Bite-board • Physical restraints

13. Anesthesia • During the 1840s, ether, chloroform, and then nitrous oxide were first used in surgical practice as anesthetic agents. • Following the development of the hypodermic needle, in 1853, morphine was added to the procedure.

14. Valued Science • Secret Remedies • Cure All’s • Pharmacists

15. Mistrusted Science • Pharmacists • People believed that they got sick from rank odors and ‘evil spirit clouds’ of smoke and pollution