The Industrial Revolution was an era of invention, trade and advancements bringing new transportation, medical and science discoveries, trading and new ways of communication but with all these positives came a hand full of negatives. Including pollution, deforestation, causalities in the work place, terrible living and social conditions. Through the struggle at the time people thrived and got over these problems showing that the Industrial Revolution greatly improved the modern world.
The steam engine has to be the biggest advancement at the time, with the creation of this new technology people could people and trading goods could be transported faster and easier. Steam engine enable traders to ship pounds of materials at once and hundreds of people to different countries. This is also eliminated the need for water mills to power factories, they could be located anywhere creating more opportunities for more factories in cities…. STATE MORE POSITIVES …. Although with this invention came with the start of major amounts of pollution, because of massive growth of cities a higher need for basic needs such as clothes, housing and especially places to dump waster. At the time people would dump rubbish, animal and even human excrement into the main water sources. In London the river Thames was the largest water source for the city, so with the dumping of waste it was contaminated with disease mostly Cholera which was a contagious disease spread only through sewerage, with people drinking contaminated water on the daily Cholera became one of the deadliest diseases in this time.
Along with this factory would creating smoke and fog also called the “smog” which would lead to many deaths from respiratory diseases, acid rain was first discovered in the 1820’s from all the chemicals coming from coal factories. In 1952, London’s factories produced so much smog that it filled the air killing more than 40,000 people because of all these deaths the medical field started to work harder, making them discover some revolutionary technology. One of the biggest technological breakthroughs was in the medical field and how they went about treating patients. Disease such as Cholera, Typhoid and Typhus were lethal because of the lack of hygiene from horrible living, working and social conditions, 5 or even 10 people would live in a single room and the work place was no better. Workers would be in the factory for 14 hours or 16 on a busy day with a low wage, some only getting $8 to $10 a week equalling to around 10 cents an hour. Their only source of light would be sunlight through the dirty windows, machines didn’t have proper safety measures and workers would come out every day covered in oil and dirt.
A combination of the housing (contaminated water, cramped spaces) and working conditions (lack of sunlight, exhaustion from long hours) led to disease spreading rapidly and at the time doctors didn’t understand how or why this was happening. In the 1850’s Louis Pasture made a huge breakthrough in his germ theory of disease, he discovered that the decay was caused by microorganisms because of their constant spreading. He did many experiments and saw which held the most bacteria from the air (mostly densely populated and dirty places) he extended his theory and found the cause of many lethal diseases such as Cholera, so doctors could now find the cure for diseases using his theory. His research is still used today, he changed medical practices to minimise how much the disease spread, immunisations could be made from weak forms of the disease and introduced viruses. The positives and negatives of the Industrial Revolution balance themselves out, with the invention of the steam train came advancements in trade and travel but that inevitably bought massive amounts of pollution, and with horrible worker, living and social conditions came huge breakthroughs in medicine and science.
