Comment by jackpirate

> Knowing that a disease is caused by "bacteria" instead of "demons" isn't really helpful if you don't have a deep understanding of exactly what bacteria is.

This is a poor example. Even an incomplete image of the germ theory of disease is a massive improvement over thinking illness is caused by demons. An extremely superficial understanding of bacteria as "microscopic organisms which can make you sick" gives good justification why people should do things like wash their hands, cover their mouth when coughing, and not lick the railing on a subway.

Knowing the difference between bacteria being living organisms and viruses being not-quite-alive does not qualify as a "deep understanding" though.

Further, the presence of people misunderstanding something that most of the population knows pretty well in no way makes teaching that subject to the population bad. Your assertion would require that believing demons cause sickness actually has benefits we've lost.

But more people know what bacteria are at a baseline level and what they do with diseases than before when all we had were demons/bad humors/etc.

There are functionally illiterate people too in modern day and the average reading level is still elementary school level, but that's vastly better than before when the average person couldn't read at all.