[LMB] word thanks

[Patricia A. Swan]

At 04:47 PM 8/5/2006, Helen Hancox wrote:

>Malfoy said (re pre-eclampsia): "Well, basically, if you had this in
>pre-industrial times, you were dead.  I would have died at the 
>age of either
>21 or 29, take your pick."
>
>Actually, this is an interesting issue. I once was in a group 
>of nine people
>and we discussed how many of us would be alive at that point 
>(we were all
>about 30) if we'd lived 100 years ago with their medical 
>technology. We
>realised only one of us would still be alive.
>The rest of us had suffered variously from diabetes, cancer, 
>being born
>prematurely, a serious head injury, kidney problems and various 
>other
>oddments. Only one of the nine hadn't had any significant life 
>problems by
>that point. Makes you think.

And sometimes people survived the most amazing things even 
then.  I was talking to my Great-Aunt Daisy one time during 
lunch at her house when she'd come up from the building with her 
dental practice.  She was grand-mother's oldest sister and was 
born around 1875 (and had been a practicing dentist since she 
was a teenager and continued to age 99 before dying at 
100).  Turns out that under her dresses, from shoulder to about 
knees, she was covered with major scars from where she'd been 
badly burned when she was an infant.  She told me that they had 
rolled her in flour to seal the surface of the burns, and she 
recovered to have a normal childhood, and grew to have a normal 
life as wife and mother, and an abnormal life as a practicing 
dentist in days when it wasn't normal for a woman to be much 
else besides a mother and teacher.  Most of her sisters were 
teachers, except for the youngest who became a dentist as 
well.  I think Aunt Daisy's dental career lasted a total of 
about 75 years, and she was the second generation (her father 
trained her) of a family of dentists that now spans four generations.

Pat in North Carolina


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