The largest single killer of human beings throughout history has been disease.

With the advent of modern medicine and the understanding of how bacteria, viruses, and parasites work,

we've made enormous strides in reducing incidents of disease.

And in a few cases we have completely

or almost completely eradicated the diseases from the earth. Learn more

about humanity's attempt to eradicate disease on this episode of

Everything Everywhere Daily. To say that disease has devastated humanity is almost an understatement.

Much of history has been written by the impact that diseases had on human populations.

I'm sure you're familiar with pandemics such as the Black Death, which killed as many as

50% of the people in Eurasia.

I've done an episode on the plague of Justinian, which wreaked havoc on the ancient

world around the Mediterranean.

The Spanish flew just a hundred years ago, killed an estimated 50 million people all around the world.

I've done an episode on the plague of Justinian, which wreaked havoc on the ancient world

around the Mediterranean.

And the Spanish flu killed an estimated 50 million people just a century ago.

Between all of those pandemics and epidemics,

there were cases of smallpox, malaria, cholera,

tapworm, hookworm, various flus, fevers,

and other diseases, which were the primary reason why human life expectancy was so low for so long.

As the germ theory of disease developed, we developed techniques for treating and preventing various diseases.

Oftentimes, eliminating diseases require little more than providing clean water.

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