The Bad Old Days

 

 

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