Old World and New: Early Medical Care, 1700-1840

The Age of Enlightenment brought about impressive achievements in scientific understanding that pertained to medicine. Documentation of the anatomy progressed rapidly, and there was greater understanding of how certain bodily systems worked. Scientists expressed great hope for the future with some proclaiming that because scientific knowledge was growing so rapidly, disease would soon be completely eradicated. Yet the actual cause of illness still stymied them. Though microscopes provided the capability of seeing "little animalcules," no one had drawn a line between the presence of what we now know as bacteria and disease and there were many misguided theories about cause and effect. Though physicians of this era did not yet know the cause of disease, their theories were key to medical improvements to come.