Another Medical Revolution Is Under Way

Polio was such a threat in 1950s America that some people thought the need to build “iron-lung hotels” would bankrupt the nation. In 1987 Oprah Winfrey told her TV audience that “1 in 5 heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS in three years.” Senior California officials in March 2020 warned that half the state’s 39 million residents could be infected with Covid in two months and that five million needing hospitalization would overwhelm the fewer than 100,000 available hospital beds.

We sometimes forget that, as recently as the 19th century, people suffered through gruesome surgeries without anesthesia and childbirth without antiseptic procedures. The first part of the 20th century saw only slow progress in clinical medicine. Medical research was sporadic, and one of the few bright spots was the advancement of public health, which saved millions of people through basic sanitation.