Public health inspectors

Time and time again, the world before the 1900s was hit heavily by diseases which affected the developed world much harder. Its effect on human civilization has been huge.

Then outbreaks of diseases such as the collapse of the Assyrian army under Sennacherib in front of Jerusalem, that saved the Jewish people, a disease largely defeated Athens, in the Peloponnesian War, 6th-century Plague of Justinian was largely responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Islam, American Indians were devastated and when the whites came they found the land empty, Black Death which changed much of Europe, etc.

Clearly what the ancients needed were Public health inspectors.

Now if you read the OT Bible, it is quite clear that many of the laws are related to hygiene, so the knowledge could be there.

Now let us assume that some ancient Louis Pasteur existed and he codified some rules of hygiene. The sort of stuff that we learn in primary school and the ancients implemented these rules and created public health inspectors. It is going to stop a lot. Just washing hands before eating and midwives before helping women give birth. Then we could reduce the rat population, in villages and cities. Removing sewage. etc.

You could rewrite most of history.
 
In addition to what @The Tai-Pan said, and that a lot of these epidemics didn't shared the same symptoms, same consequences or same anything besides being epidemics...
Not all consequences were unequivocally nefarious : as an example, without Black Death in the XIVth, you'd be bound to see the return of widespread starvation increasing in Europe to to a productive limit. One of the problems Native Americans had to face when Europeans carried new diseases was a smaller genetic pool and a lesser exposure to epidemics. Not all epidemics are preventable (far, FAR from it) especially by something as limited as "health inspection", and you'd risk some medical backlash.

As for health inspection in history...On which authority? Such inspections are perfectly doable (and not always done or applied, tough) in our era because of the accepted invasivity of the state*. Which was not a given, far from it, in pre-modern societies would pre-modern states be even willing to use some sweet fiscal revenues on mambo-jambo rather than on practical things (like trade, armies, palatial expense, etc.)

Note that it doesn't mean epidemic (or rather, their consequences) couldn't be changed. Pre-Modern people did realized since High Antiquity that rotten flesh could be used as a chemical weapon, for instance. Some practices, such as fumigation of houses, quarantines,etc. were known.
But without a germ theory, which really ask for a lot of development in scientific method, as it depends on adopting a rationalist and not just empiricist source of knowledge...I don't think an ancient hygienism can be really imaginated.

*Relatively accepted, truth to be told : just look at the anti-vaxxer movement.
 
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