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In the United States, an estimated 50 million unnecessary antibiotics are prescribed for viral respiratory infections.
When Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first mercury thermometer, he called "zero degrees" the lowest temperature he was able to attain with a mixture of ice and salt. For the upper point of his scale, he used 96°, which he measured as normal human body temperature (we know it to be 98.6° today because of more accurate thermometers).
Vaccines prevent between 2.5 and 4 million deaths every year.
Cancer has been around as long as humankind, but only in the second half of the twentieth century did the number of cancer cases explode.
Malaria was not eliminated in the United States until 1951. The term eliminated means that no new cases arise in a country for 3 years.