What was sanitary hygenic practice like in the 19th and 20th century?

The lack of clean water did not motivate others to engage in sanitary practices like washing their dirty hands. Dirty hands contaminated everything they touched and spread disease and illness to family, friends, and coworkers. Doctors only started to adopt hand-washing "in 1847 when Ignaz Semmelweis demonstrated that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as childbed fever) could be drastically reduced by appropriate hand washing by medical care-givers."

Historical Example: The lack of hygenic practices (like hand washing) contributed to many needless deaths. Dirty hands were the cause of the "puerperal fever" that followed childbirth and resulted in many needless deaths. Some famous victims were: Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII of England and mother of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII of England, after delivering Edward VI, and Catherine Parr (1548), sixth wife of Henry VIII of England, after her last remarriage.

Relevant pictures from "The Good Old Days" about Sanitation - Hygenic Practice include: (p140.) "Hard life and medical care kept child mortality at high rate." (p142.) "Diploma mills cranked out doctors at top speed and at bargain prices." (p147.) "Doctors... often careless in administering vaccines."

How unsanitary was hospital care in the 19th and 20th century?

Florence Nightingale became famous for turning around the nightmarish conditions of hospital care in the Crimean War: "...the British base hospital in Constantinople... sat on top of a large cesspool, which contaminated the water and the building itself. Patients lay in their own excrement on stretchers strewn throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them. The most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew increasingly scarce as the number of ill and wounded steadily increased. Even water needed to be rationed. More soldiers were dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than from injuries incurred in battle."

Historical Example: "Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, had the briefest of nursing careers: about six weeks, from start to finish... The product of Alcott’s nursing experience was Hospital Sketches (1863)... Nurse Alcott assisted with semi-barbaric surgeries, dressed hideous wounds, bathed and fed invalids, and eased the final moments of the dying. Civil War army nursing was particularly difficult. Advances in the technology of warfare had created weapons that were very efficient. Advances in medical science, unfortunately, had not kept pace... Treatment was excruciating, and often introduced infections more dangerous than the wounds themselves... In January 1863, Alcott fell ill with typhoid pneumonia... Louisa survived the typhoid, but her health was destroyed by the lingering effects of the mercury-based calomel used to treat it. She would suffer pain, weakness, and neurological and digestive problems for the rest of her life.

Relevant pictures from "The Good Old Days" about Sanitation - Hospital Care include: (p35.) "With plumbing notoriously shoddy, leakage of sewer gas" resulted. (p53.) "Stoves, badly insulated, fumed." (p69.) "Exposed to suffocating gas and smoke."

What was food preservation like in the 19th and 20th century?

"For centuries, people preserved and stored their food — especially milk and butter — in cellars, outdoor window boxes or even underwater in nearby lakes, streams or wells. Or perhaps they stored food in a springhouse, where cool running water from a stream trickled under or between shelved pans and crocks. But even these methods could not prevent rapid spoilage... It was not unusual in colonial days to die of 'summer complaint' due to spoiled food during warm weather."

Historical Example: Henry I of England died from eating lampreys which were most likely spoiled. U.S. President Zachary Taylor died in part from eating acidic cherries. These were people who had the best food preparation services available at the time... and they still fell victim to spoiled food.

Relevant pictures from "The Good Old Days" about Food Preservation include: (p52.) "Open milk cans attracted mosquitoes." (p111.) "Policeman chasing after butcher's cart loaded with decayed [meat]." (p113.) "Decaying [food is] daily entombed in children." (p120.) "Slum children scavenging for food in an ash barrel."

What was food adulteration like in the 19th and 20th century?

As soon as individuals moved away from the process of growing and preparing their food, they had to become reliant on others to do this important task. This opened the door to food adulteration. Either non-food like substances were added to stretch the food or animal parts not usually eaten were added to the mix. As Upton Sinclair wrote in "The Jungle", meat packers "use everything about the hog except the squeal."

Historical Example: The anonymous book published in 1757, Poison Detected: Or Frightful Truths, claimed that, to save on flour, bakers sometimes added "sacks of old bones" to their bread: "The charnel (funeral) houses of the dead are raked to add filthiness to the food of the living." Other "additives" to bread supposedly included chalk, white lead, ash, and slaked lime." (pp. 79-81) Another toxic additive was "[b]oracic acid [which] was believed to 'purify' milk [and was added to milk to] remov[e] the sour taste and smell from milk that had gone off. Mrs Beeton (the Martha Stewart of her day) told consumers that this was 'quite a harmless addition', but she was wrong. Small amounts of boracic acid can cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhoea, but worse, it was what boracic acid concealed that was particularly dangerous. Before pasteurisation, milk very often contained bovine TB (tuberculosis), which would flourish in the bacteria-friendly environment created by the substance. Bovine TB damages the internal organs and the bones of the spine, leading to severe spinal deformities. It is estimated that up to half a million children died from bovine TB from milk in the Victorian period. Finally, as PBS's "Victorian Slum House" noted: "In desperate times, shopkeepers... found inventive ways to squeeze profit from cheap food... Milk [was] diluted with chalk and water, sugar [was] mixed with sand, and tea leaves [were] bulked out with wax and ash."

Relevant pictures from "The Good Old Days" about Food Adulteration include: (p111.) "Poor people bought from hackmen... suspect fish." (p114.) "Diseased cow, unable to stand, is pulled up to be milked." (p116.) "Bogus butter spreads a penetrating stench." (p117.) "Lard and soap we eat for cheese." (p118.) Bakers added "alum to flour."

What was the lack of temperature control like in the 19th and 20th century?

In the days before central heating and air were made possible by electricity, life was only as comfortable as the temperature outside allowed. You froze in winter and you fried in summer. Even after plumbing made sanitation of human waste better, it created another problem... being "frozen up" inside your home. "[B]eing 'frozen up' was a regular winter hazard. It meant that the water inside water pipes froze solid. This not only meant that no water could get through, but there was worse. Because water expands on freezing, the ice forced cracks in the pipes which began to drip and even gush once the thaw started."

Historical Example: "The Ice Road: My Life In A Siberian Labor Camp" by Dr. Stefan Waydenfeld explains what it is like to live under conditions of extreme cold: "My life was hard labor in a Siberian logging camp, working all year round, maintaining an ice road for the transport of timber in sub-zero temperatures. I watched my father’s health deteriorate and my mother quickly grow old."

Relevant pictures from "The Good Old Days" about Temperature Control include: (p52.) "Keeping windows open at night invited swarms of flies."

What were working conditions like in the 19th and 20th century?

Work never stopped. Every day from the time an individual woke up until the time they slept, they worked. As Upton Sinclair ("The Jungle") explained, "Surely it is moderate to say that the dish-washing for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day’s work, it takes, therefore, half a million able bodied persons - mostly women - to do the dish-washing of the country. And note that this is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work: that it is a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper: of prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children - for all of which things the community has naturally to pay."

Historical Example: "From eight in the morning until eight at night, six days a week, Charles [Dickens] worked alongside rough boys in a dark room covering pots of boot polish and gluing on labels. The work conditions were appalling: "The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old gray rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of the place,rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again."

Relevant pictures from "The Good Old Days" about Working Conditions include: (p127.) "Children suffered from vitamin deficiency." (p156.) "Laying down the law: no deviation from teaching routines was tolerated." (p164.) "Students became listless because of germ laden atmosphere." (p165.) "Playroom (in a public school) built over sewer system."

How has commercial air travel contributed to global immunity?

Here is scare-mongering at its finest From the American Association of Pediatrics: "...vaccine hesitancy is not a new phenomenon, [so] it may have a greater effect on public health today. With the ease of global travel, vaccine- preventable diseases are spread more quickly and may unexpectedly appear in areas where health care professionals are unfamiliar with their clinical presentation." First, there are no "vaccine-preventable diseases" as there are constant outbreaks of such diseases among highly vaccinated populations. Second, the cross contamination between continents due to air travel is so frequent and continuous that - like it or not - disease organisms are spread everywhere across the globe allowing natural immunity to become progressively stronger all the time. Third, diseases like the Ebola virus (next) have not broken out in highly sanitized countries among an population unvaccinated for that disease which is proof positive that natural immunity works when the body is properly supported!

Historical Example: In this case, I use myself as an example. I have flown all over the United States and Europe. One time when I was stuck in London's Heathrow Airport for several hours waiting for a return flight that was delayed, I was exposed to individuals from all inhabited continents of the Earth. Honestly, I felt more and more sick as time went on... and I fell ill upon my return with alternating fever and chills. I was assured by the doctor that this often happened to international travelers and that this would build up my natural immunity... which did improve after that.

Relevant pictures from "The Good Old Days" about Working Conditions include: (p42.) "Fever has taken a perennial lease and will obey no summons to quit." (p134.) Yellow fever "finding a fertile breeding ground in garbage-strewn streets." (p137.) "Entire family mortally afflicted with yellow fever." (p139.) "Dousing filthy streets with disinfectants proved ineffective." (p195.) "Fear of malarial fever agitated the public."

How did we survive the Ebola virus in 2014 when there was 'no vaccine protection' in the U.S.?

If vaccines were really necessary, then why did the Ebola virus not spread through the U.S. when it came to New York and Texas in 2014? I believe it was the strong immune systems of American citizens which warded it off... without vaccines!!! Here is what happened... so you decide.

In Texas, Thomas Eric Duncan died from Ebola so clearly he was infectious at some point. Since no one gets vaccinated against Ebola, which in the later stages is highly infectious, vaccines offered no protection in this case.

In New York, Craig Spencer had Ebola and roamed around the city while he was sick. Doctor Spencer then checked into the hospital and was found to have contracted the Ebola virus. He was treated and then he became "free of Ebola [and was] discharged from hospital."

NO ONE IN THE U.S. DIED FROM EBOLA SHOWING THAT 'PROTECTIVE' VACCINES ARE ***NOT*** NECESSARY!

Credits: Various as noted