Recently on Twitter:
Int’l House of Bathos (@ambernoelle)Let us now praise modern medicine: dear macabre Twitter, how would you for fairly certain have died by now without it? Cause of death, go.
Guaranteed to produce many reasons to appreciate modern medicine!
I said: “Prematurity. My twin and I would probably have died within a few days of birth.” (And our survival isn’t even due to modern-modern medicine, either, since that was half a century ago. There are LOTS of VERY premature babies saved today that would have died for sure fifty years ago.)
Other answers, in case you are curious:
Sepsis from infection
MRSA from biting nails (really!)
MRSA from shaving legs (!!!!@!?!!)
Rh antibodies
Blood clots
Athsma
Leukemia
Rabies (!)
Congenital heart defect
Flu
Endometriosis
Major allergic reaction to cinnamon
Cobra bite
… Isn’t this fascinating? Anybody see the cobra bite coming? Or rabies? If you took 100 people at random in the county where you live, I wonder how many would be dead without modern medicine? Three cheers for the germ theory of disease plus all the other medical developments since, oh, the 1850s or so.
Please Feel Free to Share:
For me, it’s easy: Infected knee, third grade.
Huh.
Maybe from one of the things I took antibiotics for? Who knows?
Both my operations were for things that probably wouldn’t have killed me.
Boy, it’s often hard to say! Vaccines save a whole lot of people, for example, but you never know for sure for any particular person. IV drips I can personally speak for (not all that modern, but darned useful). Antibiotics are huge, of course. Cancer treatments have come a long way (got several friends who’ve lived with stage four cancer for many years). Antidepressants. Improved surgical procedures. Improved wound care. Medicine’s come a long way since the middle ages!
Interesting to think about! Probably tetanus from stepping on a rusty nail, or staph infection that I got multiple times as a kid from bug bites on my hands.
I’m feeling invulnerable. I had no idea so many people got staph infections from trivial things. Pretty sure I’ve never had a cut or bug bite get infected in my life.
We could easily ask as well: what would cause you serious constant pain without modern medicine? Obviously lots of room for improvement there, but I am grateful for Exedrin to keep headaches under control and chiropractic care to keep my back issues generally dialed down from agony to discomfort (so far).
childbirth.
Charlotte, yep, there’s a biggie all right. I’m taking a moment of silent appreciation that a third of all women are no longer dying in childbirth, or whatever insane proportion it used to be.