Plots like this were first propounded by the British physician and historian Thomas McKeown in 1966 in order to illustrate this very point—that modern medicine was not the primary force that caused infectious diseases to go away.2 The actual cause, McKeown argued, was socioeconomic improvements and the implementation of public health measures. For instance, the great rise in wealth worldwide during the past two centuries has increasingly afforded humans access to the clean water and safe food that technological and scientific advances have yielded. These advances, along with improvements in
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