The three most important medical innovations that have ended infectious era were:
A)Vaccination
Vaccinations saved countless numbers of lives during WWII.It took over two centuries to enable vaccines that were devised in ancient times to be mass produced. Of the Allied countries,US and Britain vaccinated their troops agianst typhoid fever, smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, plague, typhus and the chief surgical consultant in European Theatre, Cutler believed that without the vaccinations the troops were given, diseases would have posed a great threat [1]. Tetanus, a disease that once had a 20-58% mortality rate in WWI was reduced to .000001% in WWII. There were only 11 cases and 4 fatalities among approximately 11 million soldiers.[ 2]
Also,after the yellow fever vaccine was developed in 1940 not a single US soldier became infected with the disease. The final turning point in which disease was no longer the predominant killer in war was afterthealliedforcesintroducedantibioticsonalargescale. AfterDay,which was the height of antibiotic production, allied military deaths caused by infection were almost zero [3]
B) Century blood transfusions earlier could not be conducted on battlefields as technology was not present to prevent coagulation of blood.. Two important discoveries were made in 1915 whereby sodium citrate proved to prevent clumpin of blood[4] and refrigeration of blood preserved it. Those breakthroughs enabled blood transfustion during the war.
These discoveries led up to the creation of the first Red Cross Blood transfusion service in 1926
in Great Britain and the first blood bank hospital in Leningrad Russia in 1932. WWII was the first war.
C) Penicillin
[1]Vincent J. Cirillo, "Two Faces of Death fatalities from disease and combat in
Americas principal wars, 1775 to present," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 51
(2008) 121
[2]Vincent J. Cirillo, "Two Faces of Death fatalities from disease and combat in
Americas principal wars, 1775 to present," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 51
(2008) 128
[3]Vincent J. Cirillo, "Two Faces of Death fatalities from disease and combat in
Americas principal wars, 1775 to present," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 51
(2008) 129
[4]"Highlights of Transfusion Medicine History." AABB. 12 Apr. 2006.
Advancing Transfusion and Cellular Therapies Worldwide. 28 Feb. 2009
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