id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cord-016387-ju4130bq	Last, John	A Brief History of Advances Toward Health	2005		.txt	text/plain	5464	252	53	From time to time, this steady drain on long life and good health was punctuated by great and terrifying epidemics-smallpox, typhus, influenza, and, most terrible of all, the plague, or the "black death." The causes of these periodic devastations, the contributing reasons to why they happened, were a mystery. After Fracastorius, the pathfinders on the road to health became numerous, but mention here will be made of only a handful of public health heroes: Paracelsus, John Graunt, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Bernardino Ramazzini, James Lind, Edward Jenner, Johann Peter Frank, John Snow, Ignaz Semmelweiss, and Louis Pasteur. Many others belong in their company: The great German pathologist Rudolph Virchow recognized that political action as well as rational science are necessary to initiate effective action to control public health problems; Edwin Chadwick and Lemuel Shattuck reported on the appalling sanitary conditions associated with the unacceptably high infant and child death rates that prevailed in 19 th century industrial towns; William Farr established vital statistics in England as a model for other nations to follow.	./cache/cord-016387-ju4130bq.txt	./txt/cord-016387-ju4130bq.txt