[ZERO] Before germ theory gained acceptance in the late 1800s, doctors had little understanding of how diseases spread. Epidemics of cholera, typhus, and other communicable diseases were common—especially in overcrowded, unsanitary industrial cities, according to a fascinating new piece from History.
From 1850 to 1880, U.S. life expectancy at birth hovered around 40 years, dipping during the Civil War. But this figure was heavily skewed by high child mortality, says S. Jay Olshansky, professor of public health at the University of Illinois Chicago. Roughly 30 to 40 percent of American children died before age five.
"In the mid-19th century, human mortality was basically in the grip of natural forces," says Samuel Preston, emeritus sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Medicine offered "little gain," apart from the smallpox vaccine, which became widespread by the 1840s and 1850s. Child mortality was far higher in cities and among the Black population than among white people, he notes.
The History article details that diseases like tuberculosis and pneumonia were rampant. The prevailing miasma theory blamed foul odors and polluted air—until Louis Pasteur’s 1861 germ theory findings revealed that microorganisms caused disease. Acceptance of this idea by the late 1800s marked the dawn of the Sanitary Revolution.
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