preventive medicine: Quick Facts

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Last updated

Oct. 14, 2026

Facts

Also Known As	prophylaxis

Photos

Infographic showing estimated lives saved by childhood vaccinations worldwide from 1974 to 2024, with syringe-shaped bars for each disease. Measles tops the list at 93.71 million lives saved, followed by tetanus, whooping cough, and others, for a total of 153.84 million lives saved.

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Topics

tertiary prevention immunization primary prevention secondary prevention prophylactic Vaccine Mandates: A Timeline vaccine genetic counseling quarantine lockdown dentistry regenerative medicine blood transfusion surgery recreation therapy oxygen therapy physical medicine and rehabilitation prosthesis leeching gene therapy

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Key People

Joseph Lister

Joseph Lister

British surgeon and medical scientist

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis

Ignaz Semmelweis

Hungarian physician

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Sir William Watson Cheyne, 1st Baronet

British surgeon and bacteriologist

William Crawford Gorgas.

William Crawford Gorgas

United States Army surgeon

Richard Mead, detail of a 19th-century engraving by H. Cook after a portrait by Allan Ramsay, 18th century

Richard Mead

British physician

James Lind, engraving by I. Wright after a portrait by Sir George Chalmers, 1783

James Lind

British physician

Lancisi, miniature by an unknown artist

Giovanni Maria Lancisi

Italian physician

Sir Victor Horsley, c. 1910

Sir Victor Horsley

British surgeon

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Sir Gilbert Blane, 1st Baronet

Scottish physician