Greatest Medical Milestone In The Past 150 Years?

N

Natoma

Veteran
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16689654/

Sanitation was voted the most important medical milestone in the past century and a half on Thursday in a poll conducted by a leading medical journal.

Improved sewage disposal and clean water supply systems, which have reduced diseases such as cholera, was the overwhelming favorite of 11,341 people worldwide who voted in the survey conducted by the British Medical Journal.


It surpassed antibiotics, the discovery of DNA, and anesthesia, which were among the top five milestones in the poll. Participants were asked what they thought was the biggest medical advance since the journal was established in 1840.
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Man that's a tough choice to make....
 
birth control:mrgreen::love:



;)

I wonder how long it would take to bring the rest of the world up to speed on sanitation...
 
Antibiotics, without a doubt. Saved more lives than anything else since. Sawages and sanitation is not something I'd consider medical.
 
Yeah I cant really see sanitation being a medical breakthrough either. Well disinfection maybe and scrubbing and bacteria and all that but not sewers/running tapwater..

Not dissing these inventions of course since they are really important and save a lot of lives but neither were actually breakthroughs of this past century and a half.

Both th romans and the azteks had these and that was slightly more thna 150 years agl. The romans even had SHIPS with sewage/running water onboard.

Peace.
 
I can understand why sanitation is up there. If everything is sanitary the odds of picking up a bacterial infection decrease substantially. No bacterial infections no need for antibiotics.

It's not on there and i'm not sure just how 'medical' it would be but what about communications and medical understanding. Simply being informed about what is out there can go a long way towards preventing a lot of conditions. So if you're in Panama use mosquito repellent, if you're in a 3rd world country don't drink the water, if you live next to a McDonalds don't always order the Whopper.
 
nutball said:
Modern sanitation exists for a reason. Epidemiology, basically.
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No.

We don't go to the doctor and have her/him describe sanitation for us when we want indoors plumbing.

Modern sanitation exists because of convenience. Epidemiology is just a nice sideeffect really.

Besides it wasn't doctors that invented it either. Like I said ther cultures had this before the industrial western society rediscovered it and stamped "'modern' sanitation" on it.

Peace.
 
Solid choices of course, but my vote goes to Louis Pasteur for proving the germ theory of disease (and convincing everybody --it had been suggested long before, but unproven and not generally accepted), which the rest was built on. . .
 
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