People don’t die of peptic ulcers so often anymore. Here’s a nice picture:
Relevant dates include 1982, which is when Marshall and Warren identified H. pylori. It gets a bit steeper after 1994, when the CDC starts promoting antibiotic treatment of peptic ulcer disease. By 2005, when Warren and Marshall receive the Nobel Prize, it’s down around 1 per 100,000.
I was unable to find Canadian data before 2000. US data is stitched together from three different coding systems: 1968-1978 ICD-8; 1979-1998 ICD-9; 1999-2010 ICD-10.
Take away: Better supportive care cuts deaths by 40% from 1968 – 1980. Better treatment cuts another 40% (or, 2/3 of remaining deaths).