“Draining the Swamp: How Sanitation Conquered Disease Long Before Vaccines or Antibiotics”, 2020-01-28 ():
[Public health history review: as famous as vaccines and antibiotics were, deaths from infectious diseases had been declining for centuries before hand, and vaccines/antibiotics merely helped continue the decline without representing a major trend break.
Such trends date back to long before the vindication of germ theory, as incorrect theories like miasmas nevertheless led to effective sanitation and cleanliness interventions which did reduce disease: “the mortality data points to a large and easy-to-underappreciate role of pest control, water sanitation, food handling, and general hygiene.”]