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From: betsy@dartvax.UUCP (Betsy Hanes Perry)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: While my catarrh gently weeps
Message-ID: <3448@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-Aug-85 12:58:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: dartvax.3448
Posted: Thu Aug  8 12:58:22 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 01:15:29 EDT
References: <59@drutx.UUCP>
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 33

> >
> >I have tried to make it a point that people survived well before 20th century
> >meidicine.  
> >
> 
> I have a project for you if you really believe this.  Go into any
> old cemetery.  Then start looking at the family plots.  Do you know
> what you will see?  Whole families wiped out.  Especially children.
> 5, 6, 7 or more children taken by typhoid, diptheria or whooping
> cough at a time.  Carvings expressing sorrow at losing "our sweet
> girl" at the age of 13 from "a fever".
 
Ayup.  Here at Dartmouth, the college cemetary is near the heart of campus.
There's a section of it devoted to students (after all, before 'modern'
embalming and transportation, they tended to bury you where you fell!).
 
One poor family, around 1810, sent four sons to Dartmouth and lost
all of them to tuberculosis.  TB and drowning were the major causes
of death in that section of the cemetery.  I'm not claiming that
the AMA has cured drowning, but I certainly don't hear of many cases
of fatal consumption nowadays.
 
It is naive at best to think that most people were healthier before the
advent of modern medical methods.  Your grandfather undoubtedly
was a tough old coot;  simply surviving past childhood was an 
accomplishment not too long ago. He likely survived *in spite* of the current
medical practices, not *because* of them.
-- 
Elizabeth Hanes Perry                        
UUCP: {decvax |ihnp4 | linus| cornell}!dartvax!betsy
CSNET: betsy@dartmouth
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"Ooh, ick!" -- Penfold