Medical Practices In The 1930s
This image shows men performing a lobotomy
The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic act was put in place in 1938
These were tools used in the lobotomy
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“In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.” Lee Iacocca, a businessman was a child during the Great Depression, Lacocca explains that through hardships one still needs to push through; during the Great Depression, the people were able to turn their sadness, anger, and hardship into something productive. Doctors still worked to improve medicine even in these tough times; many people still invented new inventions that most are still seen today. Even in the Great Depression, people worked through. In the 1930s before the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was amended back in 1938. Before that, the first vaccines were untested and caused more polio infections. The medical practices have thankfully improved since then.
Back in the 1930s medical practices were not nearly as safe or clean as the ones here today. One thing that made medical practices improve much slower than they should've was most likely the Great Depression. Some of the medical practices were innovative while others were plain barbaric. Lobotomies were extremely barbaric, but seen as a cure for mental illness when it was not at all. An act that was extremely helpful, called the Food Drug, and Cosmetic Act was put into place. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act made sure medicine was put through testing before being given to the public. Polio, a very deadly disease that crippled hundreds of people, but was stopped because of vaccines. Before the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was put into place, untested vaccines were given to the pubic and people would get even sicker. These medical practices are both barbaric but innovative. Medical practices were hindered severely do to the economic state of America and also quite gruesome. Fewer patients could not even afford to get surgeries or other medical treatments that they needed. With no patients, there would be no money that would go to funding or the doctors. As reported by a medical Encyclopedia, One of the more fortuitous events was that doctors were working on the first vaccine for polio, which is why polio is so uncommon today; however, vaccines needed to be tested before public use. Before the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, medicine was not as safe since it was not tested, but thankfully the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was put into place. For example, “Little was known about how the disease was transmitted or how it could be stopped. Vaccines were being developed, but before the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was amended in 1938, vaccines did not have to be tested or licensed by the U.S. Public Health Service. It is estimated that as many as one in every thousand cases of polio in 1935 was actually caused by trials of vaccines” (Encyclopedia 4). Before the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, untested vaccines released on the market would actually cause the diseases they were meant to prevent. Medical practices were also quite unethical and sometimes very barbaric. There was a medical treatment that was extremely barbaric called a lobotomy. As stated by the author of Live Science, Tanya Lewis said a lobotomy is when a hole was cut into the skull and ethanal was injected into the brain to destroy the fibers that connect the frontal to the rest of the brain. Later, a neurologist named António Egas Moniz introduced a surgical device called a leucotome, which contained a loop of wire that rotated it creates a circular lesion in the brain. Lobotomies were created to cure mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, depression, mania, and panic disorder. The article states, “But the operations had severe side effects, including increased temperature, vomiting, bladder and bowel incontinence and eye problems, aswell apathy, lethargy, and abnormal sensations of hunger, among others.” (Lewis 8). The quote means patients who have under went lobotomies had severe side-effects after the procedure. Overall, medical practices were both innovative, but also very barbaric and unethical. |