Medicine In The 1930’s “I want to be “DR.” instead of “MRS.” This relates to medicine in the 1930’s because women weren’t allowed to do much. Mostly stay home and stay with the children. While most of them wanted to be doctors and be helping more people than their families. In the 1930’s there were many disease and illnesses for instance Polio. Their procedures were pretty different than ours today but with the lack technology and science they worked pretty well. Their medicine was also a bit crazy compared to what we have today but for them it was perfect. In the 1930’s there was a lot of diseases and illnesses, while there wasn’t a lot of ways to treat them and not many procedures. In the 1930’s there was a lot of diseases and illnesses, but not many ways to treat them and not many procedures. In the 1930’s there were many diseases, some including Polio, Schizophrenia, Tuberculosis, and more. Polio struck in the warm summer months, sweeping through towns in epidemics for a few years. Some people recovered from it easily while others suffered it extremely and ended up getting paralysis or even death. Schizophrenia is a mental illness that still even goes around today. The illness can affect how clearly you think, how well you can relate to others, and how you handle your emotions. Some schizophrenics reported hearing voices, seeing visions, and erratic and unruly behaviour start to appear. Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that usually will affect the lungs, but also can affect any other part of the body. It can affect someone of any age. Usually people with weakened immune systems are more likely to receive it. It can be spread by a cough or a sneeze. The cause of tuberculosis is a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In the 1930’s there was a lot of diseases and illnesses, but not a lot of ways to treat them and not many procedures. Something that was supposed to help with polio was a negative pressure ventilator also known as the iron lung. The iron lung was attached to two vacuum cleaners, and worked by changing the pressure in the machine. When the pressure is lowered the chest cavity contracts. This expansion and contraction mimics the way we breathe. The rocking bed was used for patients that could breathe at least a bit. Usually what they would do for schizophrenia was to prescribe drugs like sedatives which suppressed the patient's nervous system, because there really was no treatment since it was a mental disease. They also tried different mind therapies.For tuberculosis they put patients into sanitariums so they couldn’t get their families sick. They needed a lot of fresh air so they commonly laid on the porches of the sanitarium. They were mainly put on bed rest, so they could get some sleep which doctors told them to do. They had to consume a lot of protein so they had cattle at the sanitariums so they could have fresh meat. If the weather was too cold they used ultraviolet sunlamps. In the 1930’s there was a lot of diseases and illnesses, but not a lot of ways to treat them and not many procedures. Some other medical procedures were symphysiotomy, insulin shock therapy, and procedures for tuberculosis. Symphysiotomy is a method of surgery used on a pregnant women experiencing difficult labor. During the procedure the cartilage of the pubic symphysis is widened to allow child birth. This only happens when a caesarean section was not an available option. Insulin shock therapy involved repeatedly administering large doses of insulin to patients with the aim of causing daily comas over a course of several weeks. For tuberculosis they would remove a part of the patient's lung when the doctors or nurses could not do anymore for the patient. There are other surgeries for tuberculosis as well. Pneumothorax, in which air is introduced into the chest to collapse the lung. Thoracoplasty in which one or more ribs are removed, sometimes a diseased lung as well. In the 1930’s there was a lot of diseases and illnesses, but not a lot of ways to treat them and not many procedures. In the 1930’s there were many diseases and most of them were deadly due to lack of vaccines. Some of the cures were definitely different from what we have today but they worked pretty well for them. While the patients in the 1930’s went through a lot worse than what we have to do today, the doctors did an excellent job with giving them what they had with the lack of science.