Question

How did epidemics of past changed the way Americans lived?

In general not only economically

Answer 1

Throughout the 1890s the New York City Health Department initiated a major effort with Knopf 's advice to educate the public and eliminate transmission. The public health campaign "War on Tuberculosis" discouraged cup-sharing and led states to prohibit spitting inside public buildings and transportation and on sidewalks and other outdoor spaces — instead of promoting the use of special spittoons, to be frequently carefully washed. Before long, coughing came to be considered uncouth in public places, and swigging from shared bottles was also frowned upon. Such improvements in public behavior led to a positive decline in tuberculosis prevalence.

As we see with today's coronavirus, illness can have a profound effect on a community uphill habits and rattling nerves as it spreads from person to person. Yet the disease effects continue beyond the moments they occur at. Disease will profoundly alter society by developing best practices and behaviors, and sometimes for the best. Crisis causes movement and reaction. Many improvements in infrastructure and healthy behaviors that we consider common today are the product of past health campaigns which responded to devastating outbreaks.

Disease also changed dramatically on aspects of American culture. Builders began adding porches and windows to houses as doctors came to believe that good ventilation and fresh air could combat illness. Real estate developers used the wave of commercial migration to the West to convince Eastern doctors and their families to migrate thousands of miles from hot, muggy Eastern cities into dry air and sunshine in places like Los Angeles and Colorado Springs. The tactic was so successful that about one-third of the Colorado population had tuberculosis in 1872, having moved to the area in search of better health.

Emergencies in the field of public health influenced advances in education. Starting in 1910, the laboratory of Thomas Edison, who had invented one of the first motion picture devices in the 1890s, collaborated with anti-TB activists to create short films about the prevention of tuberculosis and transmission of some of the first instructional films. Screened in public places in rural areas, the TB films were also the first films of any kind ever seen by the viewers. The anti-tuberculosis movement was also a model for later NFIP efforts to counter polio, which relentlessly placed the disease at the forefront of the public agenda before an effective vaccine was established and enforced, and set a precedent for future public health camps