Common illness and disease during the Victorian era

As I will be working on creating a makeup and hair design for Miss Havisham and Estella, I thought that it would be important to look into illness and diseases during the Victorian era. Below are some of the illness and diseases that were very common during this time:

Cholera – during the Victorian era people were clueless of what cause cholera. In 1854 John Snow came to the conclusion that it had something to do with people drinking contaminated water. However it still took over thirty years for people to accept this. Cholera killed thousands of people. Physical symptoms of cholera would have been loss of skin elasticity and dry mucous membranes including on the eyelids.

Typhoid - typhoid was mainly caused by poor personal hygiene. People were unaware of microbes and germs therefore didn’t wash their hands after using the toilet, before preparing food, even medical equipment wouldn’t have been sterilized before reuse. Physical symptoms of typhoid would have been a rash which was flat rose coloured spots.

Smallpox - smallpox was caused by a virus which would have made small bumps that look similar to blisters on the skin, mouth and throat. During the Victorian era smallpox killed many people. Physical symptoms of smallpox would have been excessive bleeding and a raised pink rash which would become crusty after a week.

Scarlet fever – scarlet fever would cause a sore throat, diarrhea and a rash. Many children during the Victorian era would have died from this illness.

After researching a bit more into detail about illness and disease during the Victorian era, I have realized that a lot of the illnesses and diseases were simply just caused by people have very poor personal hygiene. Not many of these illnesses or diseased which are listed above still cause deaths of people today. This is because people are much more aware of microbes, bacteria and germs. Also there is a lot more technology to avoid death through illness or disease.

When creating my makeup designs for Miss Havisham I may choose to include some of the physical symptoms of the illnesses/diseases. I believe that Miss Havisham could well have had Chlolera as her personal hygiene would have been very poor.

Reference
[Online] http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2013/04/five-horrible-diseases-you-might-have-caught-in-victorian-england/ last accessed 7/2/2014
[Online] http://logicmgmt.com/1876/overview/medicine/diseases.htm last accessed 7/2/2014
[Online] http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/cholera-faq last accessed 7/2/2014
[Online] http://health.india.com/diseases-conditions/typhoid-symptoms-diagnosis-treatment-and-prevention/ last accessed 7/2/2014
[Online] http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/smallpox/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier last accessed 7/2/2014