A point made that I didn't connect before this class was the idea that war and battlefield hospitals were in a way needed to make the changes in the healthcare system. While hospitals were for the poor and traveling, the people in need of aid during the war were neither forgotten beggars or wealthy businessmen with the means to afford good care. The military hospitals were full of people that the country needed, families care about, and were unable to afford medical care outside the home. The war also brought larger numbers of people closer together. Some of the largest cities were half the size of what a military hospital had to care for. These military hospitals were in some way a "trial run" that would prepare us for growing cities, including how to manage general sanitation, food, housing, and safety.
Before then, it was difficult to prove how and why clean streets, air, and water was important to the overall health of a community. While it was easy to see that cleaner places had healthier people, there needed to be a pin-pointed reason as to what made the difference. The war created experts that could verify what other people suspected. Just like today, the more experienced/recognized/decorated/educated professional you have to vouch for you, the more people can trust the opinion.
The idea of tracing back illnesses finally emerged, and to me that seemed to be the real start of modern medicine. The idea of having a product, looking back into where it came from, the symptoms as a whole, the location it was contracted, and how to either prevent or cure it is exactly what my experience going to a doctor's visit is today.
After all these years of progress, I find it a rather somber concept of how backwards we are going now. The idea of "pure air, pure water, wholesome food" seems lost in our society today. We have to much knowledge and proof about how these things affect our heath, yet we take it for granted and simply ignore it. Not just the people, but corporation and industry as well. In terms of health, business has moved in as a high priority than health. It's a disappointing thing to see after learning how difficult it was to reach that point of understanding.
