This disease is one of the oldest to affect humans, with outbreaks stretching back thousands of years. It’s a bacterial infection transmitted in the air via droplets, and is easy to catch since one of the major symptoms is a persistent cough, a sign of the infection attacking the lungs. The 1880s saw the first major advance in combating the disease through that discovery, resulting in more stringent public health standards regarding spitting and sanatoriums to house infected persons. The distribution of a vaccine after World War II helped to stop the outbreaks in the U.S. Tuberculosis made a brief comeback in the late 1980s, but has been on the decline since.

This bacterial infection is very similar to the common cold, with the key difference being a persistent, intense cough that can lead to vomiting as well as cracked ribs. Children are especially susceptible to the disease, spread by droplets in the air. Vaccines have proved to be effective in combating it, as well as antibiotics, both first available after World War II. There has been a resurgence in the number of reported cases in the United States, about 40,000 in 2012, up from a low of 1,000 in 1976, but still, that’s far less than the yearly average from a century ago, which was around 180,000 cases.

This fever is transmitted by water or food contaminated by someone who carries the specific bacteria. Other common symptoms include constipation, abdominal pain, weakness and headaches, and the disease can have a mortality rate as high as 25 percent. A vaccine is mostly effective in preventing infection, especially in concert with best sanitation practices. In fact, the main factor in the disease’s decline in the U.S. since the 1940s has been better sanitation, combined with antibiotics.

Most common in young children and the elderly, this bacterial infection causes a wide variety of complications depending on which body system it spreads to, from pneumonia to meningitis and more. The bacteria was brought under control in the U.S. after World War II with the introduction of antibiotics. Vaccines were developed around the same time, but weren’t widely used until the emergence of penicillin-resistant bacterial strains in the 1970s. 

This viral infection transmitted by mosquitoes can resulted in some very intense and visceral symptoms, such as fever, chills, muscle pain, headaches and bleeding. In many cases there is also liver damage and/or kidney damage. Outbreaks were extremely common in the U.S. from the nation’s founding until the early 20th century, when the aggressive elimination of mosquito populations began to make a dent in infection rates. The development of a vaccine immediately before World War II sealed the deal and helped eliminate yellow fever from the U.S.

This mosquito-transmitted disease was surprisingly common throughout the American heartland, the Deep South, parts of the southwest and parts of the Eastern Seaboard for most of the nation’s history. A virus causes flu-like symptoms, as well as jaundice, kidney failure, seizures and possibly death The malarious areas of the U.S. had been steadily declining since the 1900s due to elimination of mosquito populations, and the disease ceased to be a public health problem right after World War II. There is currently no vaccine.

(12)Polio

Polio in the U.S. is an interesting case; though the disease has affected humans for thousands of years, references to it were very sparse in the country until the 1900s. It was largely unknown except for a few outbreaks in the 1840s and 1890s before then. Polio is a viral infection that causes fever, headache and weakness, and frequently resulted in paralysis or death. The outbreaks continued to rise in severity with very little known in terms of epidemiology until aggressive vaccination in the early 1960s stopped the disease in its tracks by 1979.