Malton Museum lecture 15th March 2017

Friends of Malton Museum lecture on Wednesday 15th March 2017 at 7.30 pm in the Library, East Wing, Malton School, Middlecave Road, Malton

In a change to the published programme, Linda McCarthy will give a talk called -“You Don’t Look Well” – on health in Victorian times.

Admission is free to Friends, others are welcome at a charge of £3.

The Friends say:-

”You Don’t Look Well” looks at health in the Victorian era, and the treatments given for illness, which in general were primitive and affected both rich and poor. Many people suffered more from the cures prescribed than from the illness itself, and home remedies could be abused and were often lethal. Illnesses which are rare if not absent from our lives were rife and could be killers e.g. measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis (galloping consumption) and whooping cough. Outbreaks of cholera could ravage whole families and neighbourhoods.  We all buy over the counter remedies for coughs, colds and flu, but to the Victorians these infections could mean a death sentence. Public health and medical science have come a long way and the talk covers some of the most influential people in the field, such as Dr John Snow (born in York), Louis Pasteur and Florence Nightingale. To us their discoveries and approaches to disease and to caring for the sick now seem like common sense, but to the Victorian medical profession they were revolutionary, and initially dismissed as nonsense. The talk looks at some of the causes of a nation’s ill health resulting from unsanitary conditions at home and the nature of people’s work. The talk includes examples of how medical treatment could go wrong, and how  quacks cashed in on a nation consumed by the fear of getting ill. We also look at some commercially produced remedies which claimed to cure everything from baldness to impotence. The talk finishes with a whistle-stop tour through the timeline of the NHS and how we really should be grateful for what we have – the good old days weren’t always the best.”