How Did Society Affect Society In The 19th Century

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Johnson (2006), describes how the development of epidemic control, urbanism and medical advancement has been possible, following the London epidemic which had the potential to destroy England in the 19th century. Not to mention, the lifestyle, life-expectancy and cultural understanding of health is incomparable than what anybody today will experience. With limited medical knowledge and no technological advancements, people thought, acted and pursued everything with a different perspective. Sanitation was not an everyday concern and most did not have enough water to drink, because wells where the only viable option to obtain water. During this time period, there was no running water in every dwelling, nor were there any infrastructure or thought …show more content…

Londoners correlated the transmission of the disease to the socioeconomic status of individuals. If one was perceived as poor or unprofessional, it was safe to assume the poor person was infectious or more-likely to be a victim of the what they believed was an airborne disease. The social division only further expanded the deadly virus by causing society to be blinded by the spell of miasma (p. 135). This sense of social topography caused a setback in the discovery of the deadly epidemic, because it created a sense of fear that came from the stigmatization of the working and lower class (p. 132). If society would 've united, they could have allowed opposing views to come together and solve the crisis a lot sooner, to prevent the deaths of many during recurrent outbreaks. The Miasma theory contributed to the isolation of society since most members of society internalized fear as a consequence of unproven theories about how the epidemic came about. However, the notion of socioeconomic class did not play a vital role in the transmission of the disease, only the fact that the impoverished had no other source of water, and were desperate for a drink. Overall, despite their lack of consciousness from the elite society, this setback allowed London to overcome the barriers of the epidemic to prove all smell is not disease, and allow them to solve the

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