6-17-02, Voice in the Crowd
Good and Bad Old Days
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
It's hard to admit you're wrong, even partially.
When the time clocked into the year 2,000, I couldn't help missing a
simpler time. A time when you
didn't have to lock your door at night. A time when drugs meant something the doctor wrote you a
prescription for. A time when
people respected law and order, and if two people had a difference they let off
steam behind the barn with their fists, not guns and knives.
A time when a lady could walk down the street at night and be safe.
Dalton Roberts was excited over the new age of
technology and possibilities. I
wrote a column calling him the Millennium Man.
Of course, he's much, much younger than I am.
Well, a few months at least and that accounted for it, I thought.
Of course, I was using the technology: television which
was a rich man's toy when I was little, video movies instead of 8-mm. movies of
Mickey Mouse or Tom Mix, and computers and the Internet which even Buck Rogers
didn't visualize. It turned out to
be nice to be able to communicate with someone on the other side of the world
instantaneously with the click of a keyboard. Still, I think that given the
choice I would have given up all this for a seat by Walden's Pond for a less
stressful lifestyle.
But I overlooked one thing which Dalton recently pointed
out. Medical advances.
He recently underwent prostrate surgery which saved his life.
A generation ago such a procedure was unknown and he would have died a
painful death. Now he is good for
more years and can smile at pretty girls.
Cataracts were destroying the vision in both my eyes.
My night vision was so bad I couldn't read a street sign 30 feet away.
A generation ago cataract removal was impossible.
I would have been blind in another few years, living in a world of
darkness and relying on the compassion of others.
Surgery brought back the brightness to the world.
Implants gave me vision without glasses for the first time since I was 12
years old, and that was a long, long time ago.
My only brother was two years older than and died of
diphtheria when I was a baby. The
doctor gave him 5,000 ccs of antitoxin and his heart stopped.
Were today's medical advances available to him then, I would have the
brother I never knew.
It all comes with a price tag, though.
When my son was born 41 years ago, the doctor's fee was $300 and the
hospital, the same. Recently I had a breathing test at Erlanger hospital to see
what damage smoking had done to my lungs. It
took about 15 minutes to breathe in and out of a tube.
Cost was over $1,000. Medicare
paid for it, but what about the workingman whose insurance either won't pay or
his premiums are out of sight? Only
the wealthy or the poor on Medicare have a chance.
Our modern medical possibilities have the potential of keeping someone
alive almost forever, or as long as the money or insurance holds out.
The Gay Nineties--those of the 19th Century--used to be
lauded in movies and song as the good old days. It was an easy life, laid back without the interstate
highways cutting through the countryside, without the hassles and rush of modern
day life. But the sanitation was
unspeakable. Sewage in streets.
Medical facilities in the dark ages compared to present standards.
There was no Food and Drug administration. A
can of meat could carry anything imaginable.
We've come a long way.
Maybe the good old days weren't all the good, compared to medical and
health advances. It's just a shame
that morality and manners haven't advanced as well.
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