"Death strikes down the innocent and the young": Tracheotomy in the saving of a child's life during the diphtheria outbreaks of Victorian London, 1850-1900.
Abstract
The diphtheria outbreaks among children in nineteenth-century London required surgical intervention by means of tracheotomy to prevent death by suffocation. Tracheotomy was not universally accepted, and was contested by many circles as a high-risk procedure that offered no guarantee of success. Employing a detailed primary source analysis of contemporary medical records, case notes, textbooks, and journals, as well as newspapers accessed through the British Newspaper Archive and other databases, I analyze the various ways stakeholders (physicians, parents, public health officials) contended with risk to accept or reject tracheotomy as a procedure which could save the lives of diphtheritic children. Various understandings of risk and success greatly influenced the use of tracheotomy, and this prevented its universal acceptance despite the recorded benefits of this procedure.