Take a second to think about what happens when you get sick, you either take an over the counter drug that you can go buy at the store or you call up your local physician, go to the doctor’s office, he/she examines you, performs a bunch of tests looking for certain key signals and bacteria, waits for the cultured results, and then gives you a diagnosis and a prescription to go pick up some medicine. Now about 90% of that first sentence wasn’t even yet discovered or anywhere near to the caliber that it is in today’s world. The Victorian Era was a completely different time for medicine. There are things that are completely different like the hygiene of a medical facility or how the prestige of a doctor was determined but there is also a long list of impacts and advancements that have shaped our world of medicine today and without the Victorian Era, our health-life would not be at the degree it is now. Because of the drastic differences in all aspects in the realm of medicine, I decided to take a look at medicine in that time period as a whole. It’s hard to look into it in all separate parts. I could have taken one disease and looked at it but when you look at a disease, you look at the facts about it, the symptoms, whose getting it, possible tools and treatments to cure it, what doctors, what facilities; this lead me to come to the conclusion to look at all of this in the time period and to give a glimpse into the Victorian medical world so you could get a feel of how all went hand in hand and worked in their society.
The entire point and goal that I was trying to reach when completing this project was to be able to immerse yourself in the Victorian time period and imagine if you were living in this day in age, what it would be like if you were to contract a disease or step into a doctors office. The genres and entries I put together all take a different approach to drop you into a scene of medicine. As I was writing each piece of work, I decided to keep tuberculosis as a recurring theme/topic that was brought up in some way at least once in each genre. I wanted to include something that was relevant throughout the entire time period but also show it affects all medicine as a whole. Tuberculosis is almost a character that is present throughout this project. During the Victorian Era, Tuberculosis was the largest killing epidemic. It affected hospitals, it affected doctors, it affected patients and surgeries and treatments, it made the death toll skyrocket, and it affected public health altogether. I felt this was a good central theme to draw back to because it really embodies a true feeling of what living through medicine in that time period was like and keeps the reader interested to find how it was involved in each way of life through the writings of the different genres.
Most medical and scientific writings are factual based and I wanted to keep some aspect of that fact while also making it situational to give readers an idea of living in that time period. The genres were chosen below for certain reasons to portray certain ideas and facts from the Victorian Era while at the same time creating a scene and image as if after reading this project you needed to give someone a complete run-down about how it was to live through medicine in Victorian times. I wanted to truly encompass all aspects and do the best to feel as if the reader understands fully how experiences and times were different.
Personally I’ve always had a strong interest and desire to be part of the medical field one day. I chose to look into this topic to see how Victorian medicine differs from now. I felt this was an important yet interesting realm to look into because through literature we see how different stories are written and characters are portrayed in different time periods so I wanted to see how different medicine and techniques were and how over time it has changed just like the literature has. Medicine is such a large part of society and daily life now so to go back and look at the development over time to get to where we are now is something I believe is important yet intriguing and I hope readers feel the same way as I do after looking through not only my project but maybe research of their own.
The entire point and goal that I was trying to reach when completing this project was to be able to immerse yourself in the Victorian time period and imagine if you were living in this day in age, what it would be like if you were to contract a disease or step into a doctors office. The genres and entries I put together all take a different approach to drop you into a scene of medicine. As I was writing each piece of work, I decided to keep tuberculosis as a recurring theme/topic that was brought up in some way at least once in each genre. I wanted to include something that was relevant throughout the entire time period but also show it affects all medicine as a whole. Tuberculosis is almost a character that is present throughout this project. During the Victorian Era, Tuberculosis was the largest killing epidemic. It affected hospitals, it affected doctors, it affected patients and surgeries and treatments, it made the death toll skyrocket, and it affected public health altogether. I felt this was a good central theme to draw back to because it really embodies a true feeling of what living through medicine in that time period was like and keeps the reader interested to find how it was involved in each way of life through the writings of the different genres.
Most medical and scientific writings are factual based and I wanted to keep some aspect of that fact while also making it situational to give readers an idea of living in that time period. The genres were chosen below for certain reasons to portray certain ideas and facts from the Victorian Era while at the same time creating a scene and image as if after reading this project you needed to give someone a complete run-down about how it was to live through medicine in Victorian times. I wanted to truly encompass all aspects and do the best to feel as if the reader understands fully how experiences and times were different.
Personally I’ve always had a strong interest and desire to be part of the medical field one day. I chose to look into this topic to see how Victorian medicine differs from now. I felt this was an important yet interesting realm to look into because through literature we see how different stories are written and characters are portrayed in different time periods so I wanted to see how different medicine and techniques were and how over time it has changed just like the literature has. Medicine is such a large part of society and daily life now so to go back and look at the development over time to get to where we are now is something I believe is important yet intriguing and I hope readers feel the same way as I do after looking through not only my project but maybe research of their own.