NHD Summer Teacher Institute - Post #5

On Tuesday we heard an interesting presentation about medicine in 18th and 19th century Philadelphia by Janet Golden, Professor of History at Rutgers University.

Before we arrived in Philadelphia, we were asked to read two books on the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793. Both were written for juvenile students, both were very informative and interesting, and both made me terrified of mosquitoes for several weeks: Laurie Halse Anderson's Fever 1793 and Jim Murphy's An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793.

During the epidemic, thousands of Philadelphia's citizens died of the disease. At the time, both the state and federal governments were based in Philly, and all legislators, including President George Washington, fled the city.

At the time, physicians, including the famous Dr. Benjamin Rush, had a very different understanding of medicine and the human body. Doctors believed that the body was made up of four different elements, called "humours". They were blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. When these humours were present in the body in equal amounts, a person was healthy. If there was an imbalance, a person was sick. This led to medical procedures like bloodletting; doctors felt that removing excess blood would bring the humours into balance.

Dr. Golden talked about the changes - or INNOVATIONS, if you will - in medicine in America throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. She talked about how doctors thought that the Yellow Fever epidemic was caused by the inhalation of bad air. In Philadelphia in the summer of 1793, a whole shipment of coffee from South America had rotted on the journey and was dumped on the docks. The offensive smell pervaded the city, and doctors were convinced it was the cause of the illness. However, as the 19th century progressed, doctors began to approach medicine from a scientific perspective. Although they wouldn't understand the concept of germs and viruses until the late 19th century, they did figure out how to treat some illnesses successfully through trial and error. For example, they learned that cleanliness seemed to reduce the transmission of disease.

As I listened, I came up with several ideas for History Day topics. I want to share just one potential topic with you today: the invention and popularity of patent medicines in the 19th century. Patent medicines were compounds of often unknown ingredients that claimed to sure any number of illnesses. These "medicines" often contained high levels of alcohol and other drugs that are illegal today, like opium and cocaine. The popularity of patent medicines was due in large part to the bright and colorful advertisements that the manufacturers would create. Dr. Golden showed us several examples, and I would like to direct you to a great online exhibition put on by the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware were you can see more: http://www.hagley.org/library/exhibits/patentmed/history/history.html

An enterprising History Day student could find many potential topics for this year's theme in this exhibit. He or she could explain the state of medicine in the 19th century and demonstrate that patent medicines were an innovation. Or, he or she could talk about how the advertisements themselves were an innovation in the field of marketing.

In general, I think the history of medicine would make a perfect topic for History Day. Interested students just need to keep one thing in mind: narrow it down to something very specific. Patent medicines, for example, make for a great narrowed topic. I encourage you all to do your own investigations!