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By 1918, we had been having success after after success with conquering
diseases, diseases that had caused one out of every four children to die
before their second birthday in the mid-1800s. By 1918, it was very unusual
for a child to die unless they were born with a severe illness and this
came about because of pasteurization which was introduced between 1910 and
1914. Diseases such as yellow fever used to sweep communities and
kill off hundreds of people. They discovered its association with
mosquitoes in 1900. By controlling mosquitoes, they virtually eliminated
yellow fever as a serious disease of mankind. Since the 1700s,
we had had a vaccine that was capable of preventing smallpox to a great
degree, so, smallpox, which had been, in previous centuries, a scary,
frightening disease of mankind, was under control, or we felt it was under
control. So, from Pasteur's time in 1875, when he taught us the connection
between what we were seeing in the microscope and disease, from that,
came knowledge just in huge amounts and everybody was feeling
like we were well on our way to conquering infectious disease.
It was a time of great optimism in infectious disease control mainly
because Pasteur had advanced knowledge to such a tremendous degree
that we were following one success right after another success.
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