How did diarrhea kill so many people before and now it’s not that big of a deal?

Question

Title really, is it just that our diet is better and decent food is much more abundant or is it just general hygiene?

In: 36

Answer 1

Diarrhea kills through dehydration. In severe cases it can so your intestinal lining to the point where you cannot absorb much water, so you die.

Cholera kills this way. The treatment for Cholera is to put the patient on IV fluid (fluid introduced directly into the blood), and keep them alive this way until their body fights of the cholera. So very few people die of cholera in first-world countries, both because we know how to limit the spread (hygiene, snatiation), and because we know how to treat it.