19th Century Dbq

In the 19th century one can see an increased amount of curiosity, discovery and knowledge, but that suddenly didn’t appear out of nowhere. Real scientific discoveries were brought to life and proven by observation and experiments unlike the answers people before them had thought. Questions about the universe were all explained by divine intervention, karma, or just bad luck in the 18th century. Lots of “answers” were more of less theoretical than based on actual observations. People made up reasons as to why the sky was blue or why someone was dying, but as science started to blossom, many of these misconceptions were corrected. Adam Smith said it best when he stated “Science is the great antidote to the poison of superstition.” People of the
Before the progression of the 19th century people generally believed that practicing medicine was revolved around the belief in the four humors which consisted of black, yellow, blood and pleam. It was believed that if an imbalance of any of these bile’s were to occur, that diseases were sure to stem from them. Practices like bloodletting and exorcisms were performed to combat these imbalances. Although there was no real proof of these four biles or their connections with diseases, doctors continued their search the fact that doctors could do relatively little to treat disease during that time meant that they were not always
When people start talking about stuff it because part of one’s culture. During the nineteenth century there was a lot more scientific material in which ordinary people could read. These writings quickly gained some interest, and when more and more people got interested in the topic at hand, naturally people started to write about it. Stories like Frankenstein, The Last Man, and The Stolen Bacillus were one of many factious stories that revolved around the new discovers in science during that time. Most of these sorties were written to entertain of course, but some were to inform. In Frankenstein, the focus of the writer’s work is actually the idea of creating life. The topic is not a new one, but the way this story was employed is what separates it from the rest. Shelly incorporated science, and with all the new discovers being made during her time, this made her story seem almost possible like someday it might happen! People loved the idea of doing/knowing something never done before. She acknowledges this when she wrote “I see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret which I am acquainted.” (para. 146). She makes her readers even more curious, and teases them with the ‘secret’ breakthrough. Scientific discoveries influence these types of stories, and