[alloysteel]

When I was a kid growing up on a dairy and hog farm, we were exposed daily to any number of pathogens, and you either got tough or died. Inside flush toilets were unheard of, there was the choice of the chamber pot or the privy outside.

And that exposure to a vast array of microorganisms was probably one of the less hazardous things country kids had to deal with.

[Bonemaker]

"The hygiene hypothesis, as it’s called, says that our immune system needs to spar with relatively harmless germs and foreign substances (including foods like peanuts) in its earliest years so it can calibrate itself. Without this training, it can become too sensitive and overreact to things it shouldn’t, like house dust and pollen, leading to allergies and asthma. Plenty of research has shown that growing up in a rural environment, or with pets, is associated with lower rates of autoimmune disorders, while rates of allergies and autoimmune disorders have steadily climbed in urban areas."

[Think free or die]

We lived in a place where we always had indoor plumbing, but not so in the summer. We vacationed in Canada at a place where we used an outhouse, swam in the lake, and had to bring ice from the ice house in a wheelbarrow. The icebox stood under a pine tree in the shade, and we had to replenish the ice during our stay so that dad’s daily catch of fish stayed fresh until we ate it. So good! The ice was cut from the lake in the winter and stored in the ice house with wood shavings. We drank from the local spring and carried water in pails up the hill for the cabin. Lots of places still had outhouses in the 1960’s. It wasn’t so nice at night when you lived in fear of dropping your flashlight in the outhouse or having something jump out of the dark, but it was part of growing up. We weren’t sick much, that’s for sure.