Often times when asked about the most important moments in history, people will mention great wars or battles. Some will mention treaties or an invention like the printing press. But I disagree.
There are eight billion people on the planet right now, and all of us are here because of a few men making key discoveries. Take for example, Edward Jenner, perhaps the most important man to ever live.
He discovered that people infected with cowpox could not get infected with small pox, a disease which kill a million people a year back when there weren’t a billion people on the planet. His discovery was the memory of the human immune system. We began deliberately making ourselves sick with a weaker disease to train our immune system for the stronger diseases. Jenner formed the basis of modern disease prevention.
With him is Dr. John Snow, which theorized that cholera was spread, not by bad air, but contaminated water. He worked tirelessly and because of him, we as a species decided that we shouldn’t have poop in our drinking water. A development that I’m so happy for.
His work began a movement called the Great Sanitation Movement, where people decided that it was probably better if their streets weren’t filled with poop. Not horse, not dog, not human. Huge public works installed sewer systems through all the great cities of the world. In Chicago, they raised the whole city by a couple feet to try and stop the dump of waste water into the lake, where they got their drinking water. Though there is a surprising amount of poop on the sidewalks near me. One of my neighbors needs to learn to cleanup after their dog…or themselves.
These seem like common sense, but they really weren’t. There was a lot of push back from scientists, who were working from a body of work built up over centuries. But these guys stuck to their guns and fought for their discoveries.
The public sanitation movement was perhaps the most important in history, and the doctors and medical researchers who led it. Their work is the most important in history, work that continues to this day.
Thanks for reading,
Michael
Michael Frutig 