Victorian Medicine

Oops missed Book Tuesday this month...

This article is from 2019 in the BCMJ which is a general medical journal that shares knowledge while building connections among BC physicians.

A brief but interesting look at Medicine during the Victorian era.

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta

May 17, 2019

Medicine in Queen Victoria’s time

In most Canadian provinces the second Monday of May is observed as a statutory holiday. It is a day to honor the memory of Queen Victoria (1819–1901) and her historical era of the mid-to-late 1800s. From a medical perspective, the Victorian era was been quite exceptional. Modern medicine may be attributed to discoveries made in those years as health and medical ideologies moved from humors to phrenology to anesthesia and antisepsis to what we now call the evidence-based practice of medicine.

In the Queen’s early years, health care was more or less provided to the general public by the Victorian pharmacies. Being able to access cures or remedies for illness was revolutionary for the public—even though most medications were based on old beliefs. Herbalists held an important role in informing doctors and pharmacists of the medicinal values of plants and their sources. Mixing the different ingredients took skill and pharmacies were equipped with various measuring and mixing devices. Common cures recommended by pharmacists included leeches—to suck out excess blood from the body. In general, many ideas about cures related to drawing badness out of the body. Plasters made of a blend of wax and lead, opium, frankincense, and other ingredients were sold in various shapes, to be applied to parts of the body to draw out excessive humors causing pain or illness, and concoctions were sold to purge the body of the unwanted humors. One ingredient used was antimony, which would cause severe vomiting and diarrhea believed to give the body a healthy clean up. 

Medical thinking in early Victorian times revolved around miasmas (poisonous vapors in the air) as the cause of many ailments. One important medical discovery was made by Dr John Snow (1813–1858), who demonstrated that the devastating cholera epidemic in London was caused by contaminated water from a pump in the Soho district. His discovery led to government actions to provide clean water for the public, and sewage and garbage management systems in urban areas. 

The Queen was essentially a well person; nevertheless, she had a huge health care staff of doctors, pharmacists, massage therapists, cuppers, midwifes, nurses, chiropodists, medical galvanists, and phrenologists. She gave birth to nine children, all delivered by a midwife while anxious obstetricians stood by in the next room. Prince Albert, the Queen’s much-loved husband, was heartily interested in bringing new medical care ideas into the palace. It is through his instigation that the Queen’s eighth and ninth children were born with the then most revolutionary anesthetic—Dr Snow administered chloroform by the drop method. It is rumored that the Queen’s recurrent abdominal cramps were treated with cannabis brought from India by Dr William Brooke O’Shaughnessy. 

During the Queen’s life, advances in medicine such as the introduction of anesthesia, the discovery of germ theory, and the practise of antisepsis led to developments in surgical fields that in turn opened the door to huge advances in most fields of medicine of today.

Interestingly, the Queen was against women entering the medical field. Thirty years after her death in 1901, Oxford Medical School still offered separate dissection labs to male and female students. She also suffered periods of postnatal depression, and a long period of depression and social seclusion following the premature death of Prince Albert. She may also have suffered from a mild form of dementia close to her death. It is remarkable that 118 years since the Queen’s death, with all of our astonishing medical achievements, we are still struggling in medicine and in public life with mental health issues, specifically issues related to the current virtual epidemic of dementia. 

—George Szasz, CM, MD

Suggested reading

Royal College of Physicians. Royal doctor’s diaries reveal intimate details of Queen Victoria’s personal life and health. Accessed 17 May 2019. https://history.rcp.ac.uk/blog/royal-doctors-diaries-reveal-intimate-details-queen-victorias-personal-life-and-health

Simple History. Victorian medicine. Accessed 17 May 2019. https://simplehistory.co.uk/victorian-medicine/

September Fashion Friday

 This is a cool little YouTube short.

Can you guess how long you have to sit still for a period photo?

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta

January Fashion Friday

For our first Fashion Friday of 2025 here is a fantastic video by historian Ruth Goodman from YouTube.
Lots of info on daily life for the different classes in Victorian England. 
While only a bit is about "Fashion" per se there is a tremendous amount of good info on daily living here. Always keep in mind that this is where many people in the West came from and they would have brought many of these patterns of life with them.

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta

August Fashion Friday

A question I am often asked is what colours are there in the photos? 

So for this month's Fashion Friday we present two images and a video to keep in mind when looking at historic photographs from our period.

Clothing, buildings, uniforms etc are all shades of grey of course.  However, unlike modern Black and White photos (using a system known as Panchromatic) the original photographic systems did not react to all colours the same way!

These two images give you a good idea of what colours look like in the original photos.
Note the comparison with normal Black and White in the center of the top image and the right of the bottom.

Also keep in mind that most early tintype and glass plate photos are mirror images so they are backwards from what one would expect.

A good example of how the colours don't always match up with what you would expect is this famous shot from the American Civil War of George Armstrong Custer and his friend who was a Confederate soldier.

 

Custer, on the right, has the typical dark jacket easily assumed to be Union Blue but, what colour are his uniform trousers?  

We know from colour lithographs of the time, and surviving examples, that they were fairly light blue. If we didn't already know that though it could easily be assumed to be grey like the Confederate's trousers.

 

 

 

 

Here is a video from VPS_Gettysburg found on Instagram, that shows some great examples.
There is a thriving Tintype photo scene for re-enactors in the States so lots of examples of the outfits in colour to compare with their tintype versions.

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta.

 

Homesteaders

Another "Living History" series.
This one is set in Manitoba.
Participants have to live on the land for 1 year as if they were newly arrived homesteaders.
A fascinating look at how some modern couples handle the rigours of 19th C frontier in Canada.
The series is 9 parts here is the first one:

The remainder are available here on YouTube

Thanks for reading.
The Victorian Society of Alberts

24 Hours in Victorian England

This series of four videos from Britain are an entertaining, and relatively informative, look at how ordinary people lived and worked in Victorian England.

While conditions for most people in Britain at the time were pretty miserable it is because of those conditions that so many people came out to Canada to start over. For though the "primitive" and "frontier" life in Western Canada was rough, it was much better than being back home.

The rest of the episodes are available on Reel Truth History Documentaries channel on YouTube.

Thanks for reading.

Victorian Society of Alberta