and ???
You don’t really need to go very far back to find the life in which a simple disease or just an infected scratch might kill you.
Not far at all.
Medium magazine? As in what? psychic medium?
Whatever.
No antibiotics will be the least of worries as this gimme culture takes root in demanding our medical community to work for free (not to be confused with charity, working for those who cannot) and we’re left with no medical care at all.
Besides, antibiotics should not have bee being used routinely.
Everyone knew that.
A weak perpetually pharmaceutical dependent population.
Read up on the death of President Garfield. It took him a long time to die of the infection that most think the doctors gave him.
Bring on the nano technology
Such deaths were quite common before 1940. My uncle was working at a shop for Missouri Pacific in 1930. A tool slipped and he got a bad cut on the hand. They took him to the company doctor, who cleaned it up and stitched it uo. Carelessly as it turned out. Two weeks late my uncle was dead of an infection. He left behind a pregnant wife and a five year old son, and a little insurance but no income. My aunt, my Dad said, had always had a sweet disposition. Not when I knew her.
Bacteria aren’t bullet proof, at least no more than we are. New antibiotics are possible and with scientific advances should be designable instead of counting on chance to find them as with the first generations. The problem is government and crony capitalism monopolies have been allowed to foul up their pricing. Plus government regulations aimed at ‘reducing risk’ have made them too expensive to develop. ‘Fix’ government (in the same sense as ‘fixing’ one’s cat) and useful products like new antibiotics will appear.
It could be scary. In the years before antibiotics, 90% if deaths were caused by infectious diseases. After antibiotics became widespread, that figure changed to 10%. Now heart disease and Cancer are the big killers.
Researching my family tree, every family had 8, 9 or 10+ kids. One or two children would die and the survivors would live well into their 80s or 90s. From 1700 on, every generation was like this.
My daddy was born in May 1920.
His daddy died in June 1920 from an infection in a cut on his finger.
Watch this PBS Frontline video - it’ll scare the crap outta you ...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hunting-the-nightmare-bacteria/
Its the full video - about 53 minutes.
It follows 3 cases of different varieties of “super bugs”. One in the American Southwest, one from a vacation in India, and a breakout at NIH.
As long as the government stays out of it we will be fine. Humans have a limitless capacity to invent and innovate.
Of course if government is involved I can see a time when we will live in a world made by hand and die young because they tried to "conserve" instead of advance.
Seems I read recently that nano tech may the answer. The rough surface they create totally destroys all micro organisms, The “germs” that cause infections may be defeted before entry.
At the top it gives you a “read time”. I’ve never seen that before.
Setting timer...
Anybody ever heard of this?
In 1941, I had a great Uncle die of a ruptured appendix, or so his death certificate states. My Great Aunt told me that a week after his appendix was removed, he was in the hospital doing fine. She went back to visit him the next day and he was talking about things like “you’re young, I want you to remarry”, “make sure the kids know I love them”. My Great Aunt said “You’ll be fine.” They had a 3 and 5 year old at the time, my Aunt being the 3 year old. He died the next day.
Fast forward to 1953, and my Aunt was 16. She went to the hospital and the doctor saw her name and asked her if my Great Uncle was her father. She said yes. He almost started crying and said they had given my Great Uncle a drug recommended for a ruptured appendix and he thinks they killed him, because when the hospital finally went through their mail in 1941, there was a Government advisory not to use this drug as it could
cause death. This was a small rural hospital. My Aunt was shocked and told her mother, but they did nothing. “Nothing can bring your father back”, my Great Aunt had said.
Does anyone know what this drug could have been?
If the act was repealed in 1997, my question: Why isn't the pharmaceutical industry reinvested in developing antibiotics?
Gee...I wonder.../s
Good read about the first antibiotic.