In the good old days, life expectancy was shorter than today. A few humans did live to be 100, very few. What was more important was the number of premature deaths from such “natural causes” as cancer, diarrhea, pneumonia, polio, typhoid fever, cholera, heart attack, small pox, and childhood diseases like mumps, measles, rubella, chicken pox.
The biggest health breakthrough was city water! When most people lived on the farm, they often had access to a naturally clean source, a clear stream or their own well and had little contact with others. Lewis and Clark trained their mountaineer crew to scoop their drinking water from the too-thick-to-drink-and-too-thin-to-plow Missouri River from beneath the surface to avoid the nasty stuff floating on top. The suspended minerals were considered beneficial.
As people congregated in cities clean water became hard to provide, the privies were too close to the wells. The Romans understood and built impressive waterworks using aqueducts to convey water by gravity for hundreds of miles. Unfortunately, their successors in Europe associated Roman ideals about cleanliness with heathen sin and made filth a virtue. The rivers became so vile that people drank only beer and wine. Many Europeans were convinced that anyone who drank water was uncivilized. Mae West said she refused to drink water because of the “disgusting things fish do in it.”
America started out with clean water, but many growing cities repeated the problems of Europe until Benjamin Latrobe built the Philadelphia waterworks to pump Schuylkill River water throughout the city. Many other cities followed suit and water borne disease was virtually wiped out in America, except polio.
For years the primary killer of healthy adults was pneumonia — a bacterial infection of the lungs that was a virtual death sentence. In the early 20th century the oxygen tent became helpful. Sleeping in an oxygen rich environment helped people live long enough for their immune system to win the battle. Only the introduction of antibiotic penicillin in 1942 made recovery regular.
Antibiotics have taken the sting out of many dangerous diseases. Unfortunately, many microorganisms that cause these diseases, because they are microscopic with short lifespans, mutate quickly and become immune to older antibiotics. We need new antibiotics regularly and we are running out of options. Many diseases are viral: antibiotics have no effect.
Smallpox was once a major killer, so deadly it was weaponized! Infected blankets were distributed to indigenous people. Those who did survive were often scarred for life.
Edward Jenner noticed that milkmaids who were exposed to less virulent cowpox seemed to be immune to smallpox. In 1796 he vaccinated children with a preparation from cow pox that made them immune to smallpox. It took 200 years, but vaccination has wiped out smallpox. So far, the only disease to be completely eliminated.
Polio is next. We have been close to eradicating polio for about three years. The end is in sight, but superstitious holdouts in remote third-world areas oppose vaccination. The few unvaccinated, infected children keep the virus alive waiting to pounce on the weak. People who live in a clean, but not sterile environment often become auto-immunized (naturally vaccinated) from mild exposure to pathogens. This is why we don’t get most childhood diseases more than once. So that if we survive the first episode, we are usually spared a second, but unfortunately not a tertiary phase.
The so-called childhood diseases were also close to irrelevance. When vaccination achieves a high enough level of penetration, about 95%, the few remaining unvaccinated benefit from herd immunity; there are so few carriers that transmission is inefficient and the risk of the weak ones encountering an infected person is minimized. Unfortunately, an emotional anti-vax movement with no science, actually thoroughly discredited pseudoscience, but lots of opinion has blocked success.
Ken Obesnki is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com