So, What’s Changed? Then and now

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As you can see, things are a lot better than they used to be—at
least for most people in the United States and other industrialized
countries. Of course, the world is far from perfect. But
many of the health problems we face today are relatively minor
compared with those of our ancestors. What’s more, when
faced with serious health challenges, we have a lot more power
to fight against them than we used to have. We can cure many
diseases that once killed people by the dozens, and although
some new diseases (such as AIDS) have emerged that cannot
be cured, in many cases we understand at least how these
diseases are transmitted and how they can be prevented.

In fact, it would be reasonable to argue that we have gained
more power over our health in the past 150 years than we did
in the thousand years prior to that period.
What happened over the last 150 years that has brought us to this
new place in human history? The next section will provide
some answers to this important question.