Democrats Risk Losing a Generation to Cynical Libertarianism

[happyslug]

116. Children life expectancy started to increase after 1800, as we better understood health.

The big switch was the adoption of the concept of Germs. While some doctors were pointing out that cleaning up before an operation reduced inflections as early as the 1830s, since they could not show WHY washing helped reduced infections, they ideas were rejected.

Pasteur's research on Germs finally forced the medical Community to embrace the concept of Germs and how to defeat them (1870s to 1880s). This lead to a lot of improvements in cleanness in the mid 1800s, which lead to reduction in disease. One of the greatest improvements in health was the replacement of the community tin cup, used for drinking water, but the then revolutionary idea of once used paper cups. The Expansion of Health Departments starting with the Civil War and the desire to reduce disease occurred at the same time as the Medical and Health Communities embraced the concept of germs as the cause of disease.

Thus filtering of water to filter out all of the improprieties, mixing in Chlorine to kill off the germs, reduced urban death rates tremendously. Health Departments insistence on cleanness and the adoption, first by the States and then the Federal Government of standards on food to reduce the spread of disease, dropped death rates again. Thus in the US Civil War, each side loss more men to disease then to combat, but when you get to the Bore War in the late 1890s, combat loses exceeded loses to disease due to the vast improvement in water treatment and food treatment. These improvements in the Military actually followed improvements in the Civilian urban community (Through the Military preceded such improvements in Rural areas AND in the slums).

Thus it was the general improvement in water and food in the late 1800s that dropped death rates, especially among children.

Give a personal example. The City of Pittsburgh had the worse water in the Country around 1900 and for that reason was the largest market for bottle water in the nation. The City then started a process to improve its water, it took them 30 years but by the time of the Great Depression the City of Pittsburgh had the best water (in terms of safe to drink) in the Country. My mother was born during that 30 year period and out of the five children her parents had, only two survived to adulthood. I suspect it was the water. Food was adequate, pollution was bad (this is the height of the Smoky City) but the water was the clean killer. Children are smaller and have weaker systems, what would just make an adult sick would kill a child and that is what the water did.

Just a comment that most of the improvement in life expectancy predate Antibiotics. It was the understanding that Germs were the killing and had to be killed that lead to most of the improvement in life expectancy (and the massive drop in infant mortality). It was showing people how to avoid making themselves sick and making sure their water and food was not killing them that improved life expectancy.

Antibiotics came at the end of the big jump in life expectancy. It did add to the above, but was a marginal improvement compared to the above (and may be secondary to the replacement of Horses by trucks as the main means of moving fright in urban areas, Horse left their manure all over the place and were a known source of germs. Many cities, in the inner war period in the US, made a huge push for businesses to replace horses with trucks, all but regulating horses out of urban areas as a source of power to move freight so that the roads would no longer be covered by Manure and the germs that come with manure). Just a Comment, antibiotics were the last big answer to reducing infant mortality and increasing life expectancy, but it was minor compared to the vast improvements done by Urban Health Departments (and the Federal Food and Drugs Administration and similar state organizations)