Forum Discussion
Amish living.....
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. :(
GabeU, It's definitely an ethical dilemma -- you want to help, but how much do you actually intrude? They have beliefs, and intruding too much would attack those beliefs, and then you would be out of their sphere and unable to help at all. I don't envy the position your mother was in.
maratsade wrote:GabeU, It's definitely an ethical dilemma -- you want to help, but how much do you actually intrude? They have beliefs, and intruding too much would attack those beliefs, and then you would be out of their sphere and unable to help at all. I don't envy the position your mother was in.
Exactly. You want to convince them to save their lives, but you can only say so much so as to not, for lack of a better term, scare everyone off. I didn't envy her position, either, that's for darn sure. :(
