The simplicity of it all is both beautiful and mind-boggling.

A little salt, some sugar, and some clean water.

Two American doctors came up with this formula in 1967 in what is today called Bangladesh and – over the objections of other doctors and health officials – began infusing patients suffering from dysentery, cholera, and other diarrhea-related diseases.

At the time, a major outbreak of cholera was plaguing the capital of Dhaka. Worldwide at that time, some five million children a year were dying from cholera and dysentery, according to the New York Times.

The rehydration infusion formulated by young doctors Richard Cash and David Nalin was a huge success.

To date, their discovery has saved 50 million lives, the Times says.

Fifty million lives.

What a legacy.

Dr. Cash once likened their discovery as comparable to the “folk wisdom for chicken soup and colds,” according to the Times.

And do you know who made it possible? The United States government. The young doctors were sent by the U.S. Public Health Service. 

We usually hear about the U.S. massively exporting of weapons of war, and rightly so. For all the millions of lives saved by Drs. Cash and Nalin, U.S. weapons have probably accounted for a comparable number of lives lost.

But while the Public Health Service has been performing medical miracles since 1944, there is another war out there that could inflict grave damage to the program.

A cultural war.

The right-wing Project 2025 has the Department of Health and Human Services – under which the Public Health Service exists – squarely in its sights. PHS provides a rapid response team to natural disasters, disease outbreaks, and global public health emergencies around the world.

Especially to vulnerable and poor countries.

Who can calculate how often this kind of response has thwarted disastrous global outbreaks of disease? And how many lives have been saved? And how many outbreaks never reached our shores?

We know what happened when the Trump administration junked the pandemic playbook created by President Obama’s team.

Imagine if Drs. Cash and Nalin weren’t sent to Bangladesh because the U.S. said “f*** the world” and had turned inward and built walls — physical, budgetary, political, and metaphysical — around the country.

Somebody might have come up with the right dehydration formula, eventually. After a few more million children died.

Maybe. 

But the fact is, the United States did send in medical researchers, doctors, and other health professionals because saving lives was a priority. It still is but it gets overshadowed by U.S.-made bombs bursting into schools filled with war refugees.

You know what else is getting overshadowed?

Dr. Richard Cash passed away on Oct. 22 at age 83 from brain cancer.

The man should be lying in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

Fifty million people – mostly children – lived because he and Dr. Nalin were sent by the U.S. Government to a dirt-poor country to see if they could fix an outbreak of disease. And they had a hunch.

Fifty million.

In comparison, a study published in The Lancet earlier this year says global immunizations during the past 50 years have saved about 154 million lives, mostly – again — infants and children.

The rehydration scheme of Dr. Cash and Nalin wasn’t a fancy vaccination.

It was clean water, salt, and sugar. And they discovered it by having boots on the ground, not in a laboratory.

Fifty million lives.

According to the Times, “In 1978, the British medical journal The Lancet called their innovation ‘potentially the most important medical advance this century.’ “

I pray that Tuesday’s election will ensure that the U.S. Public Health Service continues to be able to perform miracles all over this world. And maybe someday, we’ll ship more doctors and nurses than bombs around the world.

Read Dr. Richard Cash’s obituary from the New York Times here.