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The second half of the Nineteenth Century was a time when the world was turned upside down. The industrial revolution had developed. Science, transport and communication had advanced. In Australia, great cities and country settlements developed in the wake of the gold rush migration. Although Melbourne was cited as Australia's foremost example in civic development and technology, the metropolitan area had no sewers until the 1890s and infectious diseases like typhoid, diptheria and tuberculosis were endemic. Victoria's country settlements had a chronic shortage of medical practitioners and the early diggers and selectors were sometimes a day's ride away from medical treatment. By the late nineteenth century there was more understanding of the pathogenesis of disease and the methods of diagnosing it. The medical profession had made great advances including the use of anaesthetics and Lister's techniques for antiseptic surgery. By the 1870s a patient's chance of recovery in public hospitals improved with the growing importance of 'asepsis' or a germ free environment. However with only limited immunization by the turn of the century, people still died of infectious diseases like typhoid and tuberculosis. |