Medical Theories In The 1800's

There were several medical theories that emerged and held their merit for a period of time. However by the 1900’s, one concept had dominated the medical landscape. The continued development of medical theories symbolized the increased complexity of thinking between physicians and scientists. During the 1800’s, major infectious diseases like cholera, tuberculosis, typhus, and yellow fever strongly emerged in Europe with the etiology of these infections far to be known. Some of the early concepts that could have explained such diseases included the ontological and physiological concept. The ontological concept assumed that disease was caused by an external source that entered the body, and each person would experience the same symptoms. This idea was the basis for the …show more content…
Furthermore, it noted that the effects of disease varied between each individual, with the exception of smallpox because all infected people developed a rash on their bodies. Later on, these concepts had become old-fashioned and gave rose to more accepted theories, including the miasma and germ theory. During the early 1800’s, the contagion and miasma theory were heavily debated upon medical circles regarding the cause of cholera. It wasn’t yet discovered until the 1880’s that the cause of cholera was by a bacterial microorganism, Vibrio cholerae. Nonetheless, contagion was originally thought to cause cholera, which relied on the direct transmission of the disease from one person to another. However, people became skeptical of this idea because the sufferers were not infecting medical personnel who were taking care of them. Benjamin Rush, a prominent physician in Philadelphia had even lost belief in contagion. There was a gradual shift in belief regarding the etiology of cholera, and pointed towards the environmental conditions. Miasma, or “bad air”, became the more prominent theory