Which medical advance has saved the largest number of lives since 1900?

r/

Is it antibiotics, vaccines or something else?

Comments

  1. Slambodog Avatar

    Just basic hygiene/sanitation

  2. Falernum Avatar

    Antimalarials

  3. artie_pdx Avatar

    I’d bet some decent money on a toothbrush. Keep your teeth healthy and you’ve got a leg up on many that came before us. You get an inflection in your jaw and it doesn’t take much time before things go really bad.

  4. Blackbyrn Avatar

    Penicillin, which led to a revolution in antibiotics. 500 million lives saved. More info here

  5. wannablingling Avatar

    Penicillin and vaccinations ( penicillin was discovered in 1928)

  6. WorldTallestEngineer Avatar

    At the beginning of the 1900s, tuberculosis was responsible for about 25% of all deaths in Europe.  

    Vaccines are amazing, But all vaccines together might not have saved as many people as the cure for tuberculosis.  

  7. Teekno Avatar

    Antibiotics. Nothing else even comes remotely close.

  8. EchoWanderer_10 Avatar

    Honestly, i’d guess vaccines or antibiotics too, hard to imagine modern life without them 🤔

  9. JJohnston015 Avatar

    Lab-synthesized insulin, maybe?

  10. Blues_Fish Avatar
  11. WanderingArtist_77 Avatar

    Vaccines, antiretrovirals, insulin, better sanitation/hygiene.

  12. Previous_Feature_200 Avatar

    Clean water and antibiotics.

  13. kcl84 Avatar

    Vaccines. Insulin

  14. boomslang007 Avatar

    Soap, penicillin and ivermectin

  15. YorkshieBoyUS Avatar

    Vaccines and antibiotics.

  16. mayfeelthis Avatar

    Penicillin and polio vax I’d say…

  17. mostly_kittens Avatar

    The randomised controlled trial

  18. L6b1 Avatar

    Handwashing was named the number one medical advancement by doctors in the Lancet about 20 years ago.

  19. R2-Scotia Avatar

    Soap and bleach

  20. Ginge04 Avatar

    Lots of good shouts here, but the one thing that doesn’t seem to be mentioned yet is maternity care.

    In the early 20th century, if you lived to the age of 5 you had a pretty good chance of reaching retirement age despite all the tuberculosis, cholera and lack of health and safety in the workplace. The problem is that so many babies died in childbirth, which massively brought the average down. In the UK, 150 babies in every 1000 died, where now it’s less than 4. Multiply that improvement across 100 years and the whole world and you’re talking about somewhere around a billion people that survived who otherwise wouldn’t.

    It’s hard to say which specific aspect of maternity care has made the biggest difference, but it’s a combination of handwashing, antiseptic surgery, ready availability of emergency c-sections, better antenatal care.

  21. Petrichor_friend Avatar

    ddt and the mosquito net

  22. BrilliantDifferent01 Avatar

    Sewers.

    Maybe not medical and they were established in the 1800’s but sewers do more for our health than the entire medical community.

  23. MarmosetRevolution Avatar

    I will go out on a limb and say that general public health and food safety, in particular water supplies have had the biggest impact.

  24. randomredditor0042 Avatar

    Epidemiology has got to be up there with hand hygiene and antibiotics (which we’ve abused to point that we’re facing the real possibility that they’ll soon be ineffective).

  25. TheWhiteRabbitY2K Avatar

    Antibiotics aka 1940 is probably the top; however I want to shout out simple Oral Hydration Therapy.

    1960s brought about formula that we would now call Pedialyte. It’s saved over 70 million lives and is a powerful low cost resource.

  26. JuliaX1984 Avatar

    Polio vaccine?

  27. 5414d455 Avatar

    It’s a toss up between vaccinations and germ theory, and it depends on how you quantify their impact.

    Vaccinations resulted in targeted disease prevention. Germ theory changed how we fight disease, how we understand disease (the idea that they are caused by microorganisms), and without germ theory antibiotics/vaccinations wouldn’t exist. Germ theory has also influenced public health measures and basically all of modern medicine.

    I would say germ theory, personally.

  28. miss-swait Avatar

    Other people answered the more obvious answers already, but I’ll add antipsychotics. The invention of antipsychotics is what partially led to the downfall of mental asylums and allowed many people to live relatively normal lives