It's an incredible world we live in. Science and technology are words that represent truly how far we've come. Back in the middle ages, the uneducated would eat their own scabs to prevent chicken pox. Now we simply give our children lollipops laced with chicken pox. Primitive man certainly did not have the technology to create a satisfactory artificial watermelon flavor for a pox-pop.
It was much harder back then. The causes of illnesses were unknown so they were mostly invented by the local town wise man. Wise men were generally chosen by beard length and tendency to speak in rhymes. They would warn of an evil presence that would inhabit your body if you didn't eat enough slop. In those days, slop was just as common as chicken fingers are nowadays. (Interestingly enough slop and chicken fingers contain many of the same ingredients and both lack nutritional value.)
Thank God we now live in the age of modern medicine also called the Chicken Finger Age. Modern medicine found a cure for diseases like polio and restless leg syndrome. Our knowledge of modern science has even given us a thorough understanding of the problems of the past. For example, we now fully understand what made the Black Death of 14th Century so deadly. We have traced the devastation back to rats traveling on merchant ships with the Yersinia pestis bacterium on them. As early as 1928 a young scientist from the Midwest made this startling discovery and shared his findings in the animated documentary "Steamboat Willie".
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| "Steamboat Willie" was often overlooked for it's groundbreaking scientific discoveries because its excessive use of sound. |
Which brings us to today. Modern medicine. It has a nice sound to it. There are three essential points that make modern medicine positive. They are accessibility, effectiveness, and nonpolitical nature. Clearly accessibility is the most important part of modern medicine. Of course pills and vaccines can be entirely effective but if they never get to the sick people in need they aren't doing anybody any good. In our modern age everyone is welcome to get health care. All you need is insurance or a lot of money. See! Simple! Modern medicine is also wonderful because it is effective. I went in to the Doctor the other day for an eye exam. Nothing was wrong with my eyes when I first went in, it was just my yearly checkup. Through the course of my exam they squirted various fluids into and poked around both of my eyes. I left with blurry vision and temporary sunglasses. With these fluids I did not even feel the Doctors touching me! It was completely numb! True, vision in my right eye is now blurry but the nurse told me that I could come back and have the Doctor check my eyes out! The system is functioning exceptionally well! (I just need to have an additional co-pay.) The final reason that modern medicine is a great is that it never gets political. The fact is the country is very split in this new millennium. Some people want to vote for this thing and some people want to vote for another. And even some want to veto this thing and then have a parade. My point here is that it would be easy for the medical system to get swept up in this bumpy political climate. But it didn't. Politics enter into many arenas of life but there's one place that it still stays out of: boner pill prescriptions.
Thank you modern medicine, for putting gross thoughts into my head about the elderly.
