A Doctor's Thoughts on Antibiotics, Expiration Dates

Survival Blog ^ | 7/26/10 | Dr. Bones

[Kartographer]

As a recently-retired physician who is married to a nurse-midwife, my preparedness group looks to us as the post-TEOTWAWKI hospital and medical staff. Medical progress has been exponential and even just the last decade of scientific breakthroughs can equal a century of improvement in medical treatments, surgical techniques and pharmaceuticals. However, in the years (months?) ahead, the crumbling of the infrastructure and devolution of society in general will very likely throw us back to a medical system that existed in the 19th Century.

Let’s take an example: When the U.S. was a young nation, the average woman could expect to be pregnant 10-12 times during her reproductive lifetime (no reliable means of birth control). One out of four women would not survive the pregnancy, either from issues relating to blood loss from miscarriage or childbirth or Infection (no antibiotics) following same. A myriad of other complications occurred which are treatable today but weren’t back then. I collect old medical books, and even relatively modern obstetric textbooks devoted entire chapters on how to crush a fetus’ skull in order to expedite its removal from a critically ill mother, with instruments that clearly had no other purpose. When childbirth was successful, she could expect perhaps 3-4 of her children to survive to become adults, on average, with many minor children succumbing to simple infections that had no known effective treatment at the time.

This is the grim reality that we, in modern times, will face when the inevitable happens and current medical technology and treatments are unavailable to us.

[TheThirdRuffian]

alldaychemist.com

[diamond6]

Love your post!

[diamond6]

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this article, if you don’t mind.