Amish living.....
Some discussion about Amish living here in other threads. Trust me, no fun if you ask me. Yes, nostalgia is great but the real thing is different. We lived off-grid for 12+ years and truth is, it suc...
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Isn't all of this (the desire for a simple way of life) a romantic view, though? The realities of such a life are probably quite harsh and society as a whole seems to want to get as far from that as possible: no indoor plumbing, having to go crack ice at 4 am to get water, having to go fetch wood, having to feed the animals, plant the fields, harvest the fields (unless some blight has been visited upon the fields and now there will be little to no food for the winter), etc. Can we not live in simpler ways within our comfort?
It is somewhat romantic, and we all might be in better shape...
But things progressed to where they are for a reason, imo.
Claire was able to treat the typhoid victims in the 1840's because she was innoculated in the 1940s. [for those that watch Outlander].
MarkJFine wrote:Claire was able to treat the typhoid victims in the 1840's because she was innoculated in the 1940s. [for those that watch Outlander].
That's a good show. I don't follow it regularly, but I have seen a few episodes, especially this season.
Not to put the Amish down in any way, as it's their way of life and not mine, but during the time my mother was providing medical care to them I know of at least two men that had very treatable illnesses that ended up dying because of their beliefs. Rather than trusting more involved modern medicine they relied on herbs, and, unfortunately, a terrible scam involving bottles of "blessed" water that cost them $30 each and which they were supposed to drink every day. Not the Peter Popoff "blessed water" scam, but very similar.
No personal info was divulged to me by my mother, of course, and I was only told about it after the fact.
It was VERY sad, as both were still fairly young, and both had a wife and children (as do just about all Amish men). The families rally around the wives and children, but still. :(
maratsade wrote:That's really very sad, GabeU. I would imagine it happens fairly often.
It is, and it does, unfortunately, happen much more often than it should. Luckily, the aversion to modern medicine, or at least more invasive modern medicine, kind of varies from family to family, as there have been others in similar situations who DID seek professional treatment.
The hardest thing to deal with this the fact that you can't convince them otherwise. In the situations I mentioned my mother tried to convince them that they truly needed professional treatment, but you can only say so much before you begin to offend their beliefs, and she definitely didn't want to do that. It's kind of one of those situations where you know the proverbial train wreck is coming, but you can't convince them to not park their buggy on the tracks. :(
