ABSTRACT

The process of industrialization created new locations for work, disease and ill health. The new factories brought people together in enclosed buildings with inadequate ventilation where contagious diseases could spread rapidly, while new work processes introduced new illnesses. During the first half of the nineteenth century, workers, manufacturers and medical professionals were learning about these dangers, their causes and implications. This knowledge developed from both observation and experience. Moreover, this learning process was complicated by urbanization and the increasing health risks associated with this. Consequently, locating whether symptoms and illnesses originated in the living or factory environment was difficult and sometimes impossible. Nevertheless, for medical professionals to intervene in an illness with a cure, locating the source of disease was necessary. While some physicians recognized a link between certain work practices and ill health in the early nineteenth century, without a professional consensus, few sought reforms. Instead, doctors focused their efforts at improving the more obvious public health problems, including sanitation, both in the cities and the factories.