The leading causes of death have changed dramatically since America's founding 250 years ago, highlighting how far medicine has come.Diseases that once devastated communities have largely given way to chronic conditions, data shows, reflecting centuries of breakthroughs in public health, prevention and treatment."The amount of changes that have happened over the past 250 years are immeasurable when it comes to life expectancy and disease," Kenneth J.Perry, M.D., an emergency physician in Charleston, South Carolina, told Fox News Digital.5 OF AMERICA'S GREATEST MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS REVEALED AS THE NATION MARKS 250 YEARS"Our life expectancy as a country increased from roughly 30 years at the time of the country’s founding to close to 80 years today."An illustration of an 18th century hospital.
The leading causes of death have changed dramatically since America's founding 250 years ago.(Hulton Archive/Getty Images)Although there were no official national mortality records in 1776, historians agree that the following illnesses were responsible for the largest number of deaths.These conditions had much higher fatality rates in 1776 because Americans had no antibiotics, few vaccines, no understanding of germ theory, no sterile surgical techniques and limited access to hospitals, experts note.Yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 1793.
Carriages rumbled through the streets to pick up the dying and the dead.(Getty Images)There was also a lack of safe drinking water, modern sewage systems and refrigeration, making it more likely for foodborne and waterborne illnesses to spread.Patients also did not yet have access to blood transfusions, anesthesia and other lifesaving medical advances, according to the CDC, NLM and NIH.The first official national mortality statistics were published by the U.S.
Census Bureau in 1900.The data points to the following leading causes of death in the 1900s.Nearly one-third of all deaths were caused by pneumonia, tuberculosis and diarrheal d...