Some diseases get chapters or whole books written about them because they were dramatic and make for good stories, even though they never contributed *that* much to mortality:
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Cholera and the famous story about John Snow and the Broad Street pump. Polio and the vaccine race between Sabin and Salk. Pasteur and the rabies vaccine. Semmelweis and puerperal fever.
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Gastroenteric diseases (including dysentery and infectious diarrhea) were more important than all of those but rarely discussed. Same with diphtheria. In some cases I think it's just because the stories are more incremental/gradual and less dramatic.
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Even among diseases that were major killers, such as tuberculosis, it's easy to get the history wrong.
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If you briefly skim a history of TB, you might get the impression that it was solved by antibiotics—and this is true, but the mortality rate had already declined a lot by that point! (“Chemotherapy” on this chart means antibiotics)pic.twitter.com/et97CbBcs1
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This is why I'm researching infectious diseases and our weapons against them from a quantitative view right now. To get my summary and conclusions, follow me or subscribe to
@rootsofprogress:https://rootsofprogress.org/subscribeShow this thread
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Spanish flu of 1918 rarely discussed... infected 500 million!!
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