The lifesavers included chlorination and other means of safeguarding drinking water, the lowly toilet and sewer, the control of disease vectors like mosquitoes and fleas, programs for large-scale vaccination, the promotion of hand-washing, and basic prenatal and perinatal care such as nursing and body contact. When disease and injuries do strike, advances in medicine keep them from killing as many people as they did in the era of folk healers and barber-surgeons, including antibiotics, antisepsis, anesthesia, transfusions, drugs, and oral rehydration therapy (a salt and sugar solution that
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