"What makes all common diseases go away?

The praise for lives stretched long and wide,
To vaccines and pills we often confide.
But the truth, so simple, shines more bright:
Cleanliness brought us life’s new light.

In New York’s streets, year eighteen-ninety-four,
No mud, but horse dung piled galore.
Each horse, a load of fifteen pounds or more,
Times thousands, left filth we can’t ignore.

Three million pounds of waste each day,
And gallons of urine, forty thousand, they say.
The streets, a stench, a wretched maze,
A minefield tread in cautious ways.

Crossing sweepers stood, for coins they’d clean,
A path through muck, a fleeting sheen.
Wet days turned streets to swampy streams,
Dry days? Dust-choked breath and dreams.

Manure stacked high, to forty feet it soared,
Sometimes sixty, where no one could afford.
Flies bred fast in that foul heap,
Spreading sickness, death’s cold sweep.

Typhoid and fevers claimed the young,
From filth and flies, disease was sprung.
Weak bodies, starved, could not withstand,
The plagues that swept across the land.

Then sewers came, and cleaner ways,
Good food to strengthen brighter days.
Infections fell, lives grew long and strong,
Hygiene, not vaccines, led the throng.

Yet still some cling to shots alone,
As if clean water, food, atone.
The CDC and others chase
A business model, not health’s true face.

So let’s recall, with hearts sincere,
What cuts disease and calms our fear:
Clean hands, good meals, a world made right,
These bring us life, and health, and light.