Modern Medicine

In 1901, John D. Rockfeller was the richest American alive. He was worth about $200 million dollars (about $8 billion in today’s dollars). Sadly, all of that money could not save his grandson from dying in 1901 from Scarlet Fever.

In the 19th-century United States, scarlet fever was a primary cause of childhood mortality. While the total number of deaths for the entire century is not available due to limited record-keeping, historical data highlights its devastating impact. Fatality rates for those infected typically ranged from 15% to 30%.

27 years later, an antibiotic was found that would have saved Junior. It would however be more than a decade before that antibiotic would be generally available here in America.

President Coolidge’s 16-year-old son died in 1924 from a bacterial infection as well. How did he get a bacterial infection? He played tennis on the White House lawn and got a blister. I’m not sure when you’re deciding what to do at the White House, dying from playing tennis is a possibility that you could reasonably predict.

18 years later, the first actual patient saved by penicillin was in 1942. Her name was Anne Miller and doctors used half of all the antibiotics in America to save her. It’s a crazy story. You should Google it.

By 1945, production had increased but antibiotics were not available to most citizens. Their use was restricted to soldiers in the war effort. By the late 1950s, further production increases and improvements to transportation and storage had developed to the point where you could now get them nearly anywhere.

If you like medicine, and I don’t know many people that don’t, just give that a thought the next time you’re picking up medicine from your pharmacy. Antibiotics have only been around for 80 years. Transatlantic airplane flights have been around longer.