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Medical Advances In The 1800s Essay

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Medical Advances in the 1800s You are in a horrific car accident. You wake up to blood gushing from your head to your toes, missing limbs, and have numbness throughout your entire body. You are rushed to the hospital and terrified as you head to surgery. The physician begins to make incisions while you are wide awake. In today’s world this may seem insane, but before the 1800s this was not out of the ordinary. Medical advances have improved tremendously. Patients in today’s world should be thankful for the physicians from the 1800s that impact their lives still today. This paper will explore the many advances in medicine during the 1800s. It will also explain in detail the specific points of medical benefits, ethical concerns, humane/inhumane advances, and legal ramifications of this time. There were many advancements in medicine …show more content…

Silver is the first main topic in my research. “B.C. Crede, a surgeon, is credited with being the first to employ colloidal silver for wound antisepsis in 1891” (Wesley 291). Silver impacted the medical field tremendously! Silver nitrate was used successfully to treat skin ulcers and compound fractures according to (Wesley 290). Another doctor that applied his knowledge in this field was Doctor Carl Siegmund Franz Crede. He discovered that the use of silver nitrate eye drops could be used to prevent Ophthalmia Neonatorum in newborn infants (Wesley 291). Semmelweis was also an influential physician. He discovered that Puerperal Sepsis could be decreased by improving hygiene through washing our hands (Wesley 291). The improvement of washing hands decreased the risk for infection. Today doctors wash their hands between everything that they do and influence patients to do so also. The use of silver in the 1800s greatly impacts our society today, and we are thankful today for these doctors and their accomplishments. The next advancement in medicine in

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