After 1870, the Nightingale model of professional training of nurses was widely replicated. Linda Richards (1841 – 1930) studied in London and became the first professionally trained American nurse. She established nursing training programs in the United States and Japan. She also created the first system for keeping individual medical records for hospitalized patients.
In the late 1800s, the US stopped following European medical influences, and started making their own. In the late 1800’s the “Germ Theory” was created by Louis Pasteur, and medicine in America was changed forever. The “Germ Theory” simply states that tiny microbes called germs cause illness and disease. Pasteur’s discovery was extremely important to the medical world. Robert Koch an American Doctor, used Pasteur’s theory to identify the bacterium anthrax and in 1882. With this discovery, he developed a way to stain the microbes (germs) which led to his discovery of the tuberculosis disease. Also, Pasteur’s Germ Theory enabled the production of some of the first vaccines, and therefore, the first methods of disease prevention. This lead to many other discoveries to develop vaccines for Typhoid in 1896 and Tuberculosis in 1906. Soldiers were successfully vaccinated in World War I and II against such diseases. In 1899, Felix Hoffman develops aspirin (acetyl salicylic acid). The juice from willow tree bark had been used as early as 400 BC to relieve pain. 19th century scientists found out that it was the salicylic acid in the willow tree juice that helped with pain management. Drinking the juice caused severe irritation of the throat and stomach, so it wasn’t always worth using. Hoffman synthesized acetyl salicylic acid, developing what is now the most widely used medicine in the world...Asprin |