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Ipswich Hospital Museum: Consequences of Poor Sanitation & Early History of Ipswich Hospital (Transcription)
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Melanie: What kind of diseases were common in Ipswich, that would have been caused as a result of poor sanitation?
Jane: By poor sanitation: typhoid and cholera were the two big ones and there was only, in 1860 when the hospital opened, there was only a small understanding, or they were just starting to understand, the transmission of infection.
The way that they designed the hospital and the way that drains were in the around the town, disease was spread extremely easily because excreta was being rushed down the drains whenever there was any runoff, people bathed and utilised the river for waste and then they drank from that.
We've got records where a cartage system would come and deliver the barrels of water that were just taken from the river, there was no filtering of that water.
You might have boiled it for cooking and teas and things like that but people used it to drink and so infection just spread wildly.
It's not until later they start to realise the importance of isolation and isolating those people.
Some of the wards when the hospital was first built were for patients with fevers, so here they've just got a high temperature and they're probably saying yes it's caused by typhoid and they've got an idea of how they obtained it, but they're still not not understanding the importance of sanitation and the importance of hygiene in any great way.
Melanie: So, at that time, there wouldn't have been the hand washing routine, so when nurses were emptying out the pans ...
Jane: ... yes they may go and go to the next patient without really washing their hands because there wouldn't have been the hand washing facilities available for them because there'd be no running water all of the water would be in jugs and and things like that so they could go and wash their hands in a basin of water, but because water was so important they may not empty that out and use fresh water every time that they're washing their hands so infection became a problem.
There wasn't wasn't terribly much study in nursing until of course Florence Nightingale, when she came back from the Crimean War and started the School of Nursing at Saint Thomas's in London - and surprisingly that that opened 1860 the same year this hospital opened.
The nurses here didn't have any training whatsoever so they would have just done what they were taught by the person before them and so poor hygiene practices could be within the hospital without them really understanding it.
Florence Nightingale came back from the Crimean War saying it is important, I've noticed that nurses should be washing their hands that doctors should be washing their hands there was good outcomes for patients whose doctors were very hygienic in the way that they were treating their patients so it's obvious that it's that hand washing is an important component of it.
We didn't get any trained nurses here at the hospital until the late 1800s so 1890s we finally were getting nurses that had received training and they brought that training here to the hospital.
Not surprisingly, our first Matron, Matron Raymond, died from typhoid fever, she was here when we first opened hospital in 1860 and in 1866 she died from typhoid contracted.
Melanie: Were there many other hospital staff deaths, because ...
Jane: ... yes we've got records where other other nurses had died from infections that they had developed from patients in the ward.
Most of the patients that were coming into the hospital were coming in because of those infections or from trauma, so they were the two major reasons why people were admitted to the hospital, and so infections such as cholera and typhoid were probably one of the major reasons for patients being admitted or other infections that were caused by poor sanitation.