Lo, one day it came to pass
that I did wend my way to a small edifice in the town of Brookneal where I do practice
the healing arts for the inhabitants of the County Campbell. It so happened that a man of great age passed
through said doors to have me spy out a cure for the dread malady, Bronchitis.
With great care, I listened to
his Account of how his grandchildren had brought Germs into his home from the
local institution of learning. More, how
that which he coughed up had changed in colors and how he could remember seeing
all hours of the clock through the night due to his Great Coughing.
Further, I listened to his
chest with a Scope of Stethe and even ordered a Radiograph to discern if such
infection had descended from Bronchitis to Pneumonia.
After all this, I returned to
Speak with Him. “What thou hast,” I
declaimed. “Is the ailment,
Bronchitis. In the Bad Old Days, a
doctor would have bled Thee till Thou wast better or in the ground, but I have
a New Fangled Invention called an Antibiotic and it is more effective than
bleeding and it hurts less To Boot.”
“Canst Thou not give me a Shot?” Henry asked me. “For, verily, I remember that the Medics of
my youth used to give a Shot and while it hurt muchly, it granted healing Real
Quick.”
“It might be that that was so,”
I spake, as one doling important information to one greatly deficient. “But penicillin doeth very little for the
Resistant Bugs we see now adays – mostly because doctors over used it in
ancient days.”
“Say not thou, What is the
cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire
wisely concerning this.” (Ecclesiastes 7:10)
I have found, through my half
century of experience that many look fondly on the Good Old Days, as they speak
of them. They were the times when kids
didn’t have Smart Phones and most folks didn’t have Air Conditioning and doctors
gave penicillin shot for What Ailed You.
Surely, there was much good in
Those Days. And yet, there was evil
then, just as there is evil today. For
the heart of man, without God, tends towards darkness and many were the
families who suffered as a result.
If I would say that the 1990s
are better than these Crazy Days in the 2020s, it is simply that I was younger
then and further, that my forgetter has worked over time in dis-remembering the
Negatives. For even then, there were Wars
and Rumors of Wars, Famines and Earthquakes, and yeah, even Hurricanes like
Andrew and Hugo.
It is best to look forward, glad for those past moments, but attempting to make the Lives Around Us better. For, the question is not really whether a Shot of Penicillin is worth Thirty Pills of cephalexin, but what is best to make tomorrow night restful and free of coughing and for that, dwelling on the past has little efficacy for improving the future
