What Were The Most Common Diseases in the 1800s?

Do you want to know what were the most common diseases in the 1800s? Perhaps you are writing a book about medical advancements or maybe you are just interested in what people suffered from back then. Whatever your reason, I can tell you that it is not as simple as saying this disease was the most common or that disease was the most common. Instead, there are a few different elements you must look at when deciding which one of these diseases would be considered the most common.

People today are going to the doctor pretty often. That was not the case in the 1800s. That was when people didn’t have doctors around all that much. Since no doctors were running around, many people were suffering from diseases that could be easily cured today. Here is a list of some of the most common diseases in the 1800s along with a description and how they were cured.

The Most Common Diseases in the 1800s

The 1800s were a time of great progress in medicine and science, but there were still some pretty common diseases that could be deadly.

The most common disease was smallpox, which killed about 400,000 people a year between 1801 and 1809. Smallpox was so common because it was easy to catch from someone who had it. It would spread through the air when an infected person coughed or sneezed.

Another common disease was influenza (flu), which killed about 30,000 people per year from 1820 to 1829. People got flu by breathing in air that had been breathed out by someone with flu germs in their nose or throat mucus. Flu can also be passed along through contact with surfaces where sick people have touched them (like door handles) or on objects they’ve touched (like pens).

Of course, there were many other diseases besides these two that caused death in the 1800s!

The new diseases that affected people in the 1800s included:

  • Measles,
  • Mumps,
  • Rubella (German measles),
  • Whooping cough (pertussis),
  • Chickenpox (varicella),
  • Diphtheria,
  • Meningitis,
  • Pneumonia/influenza,
  • Polio/influenza-like illnesses

The most common diseases in the early 1800s were smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, whooping cough, cholera, and tuberculosis. The most common causes of death were cholera and tuberculosis (or “consumption”).

Other viral diseases such as :

  • Hepatitis A;
  • Bacterial meningitis;
  • Syphilis;
  • Gonorrhea;
  • Malaria/yellow fever;
  • Dengue fever;
  • Ebola virus disease;
  • Zika virus disease;
  • Japanese encephalitis virus disease;
  • West Nile virus disease (WNV);
  • Tick-borne encephalitis virus disease;
  • Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF).