The Discovery Of Oral Rehydration Therapy
- Date
- 1968
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- South Asia (Bangladesh)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
In 1968 clinical trials in Dhaka, published in The Lancet, demonstrated that a simple solution of water, salt, and sugar could treat the lethal dehydration of cholera and diarrhoea, a breakthrough the journal later hailed as potentially the most important medical advance of the twentieth century.
Researchers David Nalin and Richard Cash, working at the cholera research laboratory in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) alongside colleagues in Calcutta, showed that glucose enables the gut to absorb water and salts even during acute infection, so patients could be rehydrated orally rather than through scarce and costly intravenous drips. The method's genius lay in its cheapness and simplicity: it required no hospital, no sterile equipment, and could be administered by families anywhere. Deployed during a cholera epidemic among Bangladeshi refugees in 1971 with dramatic results, oral rehydration therapy spread worldwide through UNICEF and the World Health Organization. It has since been credited with preventing tens of millions of deaths, overwhelmingly of young children, and remains one of the most cost-effective life-saving interventions ever devised.
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Empires active in 1968
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Dutch Empire1581 CE – 1975 CE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Apollo 11 Moon landing20 July 1969 (mission 16–24 July 1969)
- Green Revolution Transforms South Asian Agriculturec. 1966 (peak adoption mid-1960s onward)
- Intel Releases the 4004, the First Commercial Microprocessor1971
- The Apple II Launches the Personal Computer Era1977
- Invention of the integrated circuit1958–1959
- Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite4 October 1957
Also relevant
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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