Victorians: Just like us?

A very interesting thing I learned from the short article regarding the history of the Victorians was that Queen Victoria used Chloroform when giving birth to her son. Quote: “Queen Victoria taking chloroform for the birth of her son in 1853” (Shepard). Queen Victoria’s use of chloroform made many people more interested in expanding on antiseptics to both ease the pain of birth and stop the spread of bacterial infection. Though, the main purpose was to simply ease the pain of birth for the mothers. This would further be researched and advanced upon by Joseph Lister, who lived from 1827 to 1912. This would of course absolutely apply to today in that we use many antiseptics, not only for birth but also to of course for other medical problems and has become very important today for such a reason. We are very much a like the Victorians in that we both use these medicines to help ease pain (both through abuse of the drugs like in Sherlock Holmes with his heroine addiction, but also for legitimate medical issues). Without advancements like these in medicines we would have a much higher infant mortality rate in the West. This is why the West is best. 😊