Nineteenth-century Philadelphia was rife with the pandemonium of nonstop epidemics that plagued the city from the 1800s to the 1920s. The many people who died in these epidemics are of great interest to demographers, or scientists who study the growth and density of populations. Gretchen Condran is one such demographer who finds these statistics fascinating.
On Wednesday, September 27, 2007, the Great Works Symposium presented "Death in the Time of Cholera: The Epidemiological and Mortality Transitions in 19th Century Philadelphia," a lecture given by Condran, a sociology professor at Temple University. A room full of about 30 students listened to the gory details in Nesbitt 125.
Condran began the lecture by reading from the diary of those who witnessed the epidemic first-hand. One particular diary recorded the deaths of one man’s peers and children. The diary holds a record of the devastation Philadelphia faced. "What I want to suggest to you is that [this experience] was repeated many times in Philadelphia over the course of the 19th century," Condran said. "Epidemics appeared suddenly and unexpectedly in the city and they were geographically limited."
Another disease that killed many people at the time was tuberculosis: in the course of five or 10 years, the disease would kill more people than any singular epidemic would. "But epidemics were dramatic."
"Epidemics are important because of the kinds of responses they elicited," Condran said. Investigating the death rates in the city, Condran explained how the Crude Death Rate, or the number of deaths in one year per 1,000 people, declined from 1807 to 1930. "There was an amazing kind of shift from high mortality levels to lower ones." This was due to several factors: refrigeration, diet, sanitation, and education, for example. This also had an affect on life expectancy; in the early 1800s, at the beginning of the Crude Death Rate decline, life expectancy was 40 years; by 1930, it was about 60.
It was a health revolution. "There was a shift in what we die from," Condran said. "In 1870, you died from infectious diseases, tuberculosis, smallpox, and childhood diseases. Today, the leading cause of death is heart disease, stroke. Pneumonia wouldn’t even make the top 10. This is the mortality transition."
The mortality transition was also accompanied by a reduction of mortality in infants, which meant children were living longer. "One of these mortality shifts was the assurance that your children would live until adulthood," Condran said. This had an "enormous change on family life, on the number of children you were going to have, and your attitudes towards the children. Knowing they would live changed how we thought about them."
This shaped the way people felt about children; in the early 1800s, women used to die around 40-years-old, whereas women are currently living into their late 70s. "Now," Condran said, "we start childbearing later, have 1.7 children, and finish childbearing early. By the time a woman’s in her late 30s, her children are gone. And she has another 40 – 50 years to live!" This change shaped how women wanted to live their lives; it shaped their aspirations. In the 20th century, the question, Condran said, is "what to do after children? In the 19th century, there was no "after children."
In addition to changing the opinions and attitudes towards children, the mortality transition has resulted in a very rapid increase of old age population, which brings its own set of new problems to society. Now, while people are dying of degenerative diseases, they still live much longer.
With the threat of epidemics no longer stalking the streets of Philadelphia, there are other problems society must face. If scientists can learn anything from the past, it’s that these epidemics not only affect life and death, but the way society as a whole is integrated and functions.
Ali Cahill is a senior at Drexel majoring in English. She is also the Managing Editor of ASK.
