Comment on: 'We're in a right state'
Comment on: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/mar/12/disability-britain-society-lucy-mangan?commentpage=last#end-of-comments
Partial repost.
Society ascribes a sliding scale of deference to illness and infirmity. If your inability to rise from your bed is caused by, for instance, that genius idea you had at half nine the previous night to switch to shorts, and your symptoms include headache, nausea, 40% proof perspiration and the nagging thought that you did something dreadful in your left shoe last night, you are unlikely to get much sympathy. Consideration for others should, however, be extended to those who have trouble getting about, ranging from those struggling with three bags or more of rebellious shopping, through those with sticks or crutches and wheelchairs, all the way up to speeding ambulances or creeping hearses.
The possible exception is when one sees a tanned, fit looking sort with a colourful cast on his foot and you briefly wonder how deserving of sympathy is somebody who may have just stubbed their toe when pissed out their skull on schnapps during their recent skiing holiday.
Social attitudes towards illness and infirmity have changed significantly over time. A hundred years ago, there was a simple scale; standard-issue ‘healthy’ was upright and able-bodied, but afflicted by any number and combination of maladies that stunted your growth, gave you sores, caused you to walk funny, caused you to look funny, or caused people to look funny at you, throw rocks at you, or in extreme cases hound you out of the village with pitchforks.
If you were ‘poorly’ this normally meant that working eighteen hours a day in a factory or down a coal mine had left you with the sort of cough that would shake a lesser man apart at the seams and a talent for producing different coloured phlegm to order, including multi-coloured on bank holidays.
‘Badly’ was a description of the after-effects of a threshing accident. Today we would say ‘in a critical condition’ or ‘has anybody found his head yet?’ In the huge open plan mills of the industrial revolution, being caught in a loom and accidentally woven into the pattern of a carpet was so common that the drama was downplayed. Likewise, farming and industrial machinery consisted of overheated boilers, spinning flanges, swooping sharp bits and, of course, flywheels driving exposed belt-loops designed to catch not just extremities but bonnets, frilly shirts and other stunningly impractical clothing of the age.
Luckily, we now have advances not just in health and safety, but tight clothing and, of course, medication. But even the cure can be tricky. For instance, not long ago I decided to treat a sniffle by trying an allegedly ‘non-drowsy’ berry-flavoured drink. What I remember is a sensation of hot ribena and then waking up at two in the afternoon feeling a bit queer and not at all surprised that housewives get hooked on painkillers, it makes the dull bit of the afternoon go quicker than two sherries and an episode of ‘antiques roadshow’.
But at least it was a proper chemical cure. When faced with a complex problem or illness there’s nothing worse than these quack cures that homoeopathists peddle - shoving a banana up your arse to cure a headache or whatever (peel it first - you don’t want to look stupid). The purveyors of quack cures should, at least, be honest in their trade, possibly by ditching the white lab coat and simply rolling into town in a horse-drawn wagon, pulling up in the town square and putting on a medicine show flogging ‘Professor McTeeths all-nachural-snakebite-liniment’, a patent cure-all for warts, coughs, lost limbs, teenage boys playing with themselves and, if you drink the stuff, sobriety.
Of course there is a school of thought that you can treat just about anything with alcohol. For instance the belief that a ‘hot toddy’ can have a positive benefit on a cold is so widespread that it’s a wonder you can’t get Glenfiddich on the NHS. Certainly there’s a time and a place for alcohol in the treatment of illness; having a drink to celebrate your hangover dissipating or knocking back an enormous gin while you tell your friends the tale of how you came to lose your arm, while standing on your brand-new tiger skin rug.
(Painful pelvis sounds like a right pain in the arse…and hip, and whole pelvisish region. Hope you are once more able to frolic like a spring lamb on speed soon).
Partial repost.
Society ascribes a sliding scale of deference to illness and infirmity. If your inability to rise from your bed is caused by, for instance, that genius idea you had at half nine the previous night to switch to shorts, and your symptoms include headache, nausea, 40% proof perspiration and the nagging thought that you did something dreadful in your left shoe last night, you are unlikely to get much sympathy. Consideration for others should, however, be extended to those who have trouble getting about, ranging from those struggling with three bags or more of rebellious shopping, through those with sticks or crutches and wheelchairs, all the way up to speeding ambulances or creeping hearses.
The possible exception is when one sees a tanned, fit looking sort with a colourful cast on his foot and you briefly wonder how deserving of sympathy is somebody who may have just stubbed their toe when pissed out their skull on schnapps during their recent skiing holiday.
Social attitudes towards illness and infirmity have changed significantly over time. A hundred years ago, there was a simple scale; standard-issue ‘healthy’ was upright and able-bodied, but afflicted by any number and combination of maladies that stunted your growth, gave you sores, caused you to walk funny, caused you to look funny, or caused people to look funny at you, throw rocks at you, or in extreme cases hound you out of the village with pitchforks.
If you were ‘poorly’ this normally meant that working eighteen hours a day in a factory or down a coal mine had left you with the sort of cough that would shake a lesser man apart at the seams and a talent for producing different coloured phlegm to order, including multi-coloured on bank holidays.
‘Badly’ was a description of the after-effects of a threshing accident. Today we would say ‘in a critical condition’ or ‘has anybody found his head yet?’ In the huge open plan mills of the industrial revolution, being caught in a loom and accidentally woven into the pattern of a carpet was so common that the drama was downplayed. Likewise, farming and industrial machinery consisted of overheated boilers, spinning flanges, swooping sharp bits and, of course, flywheels driving exposed belt-loops designed to catch not just extremities but bonnets, frilly shirts and other stunningly impractical clothing of the age.
Luckily, we now have advances not just in health and safety, but tight clothing and, of course, medication. But even the cure can be tricky. For instance, not long ago I decided to treat a sniffle by trying an allegedly ‘non-drowsy’ berry-flavoured drink. What I remember is a sensation of hot ribena and then waking up at two in the afternoon feeling a bit queer and not at all surprised that housewives get hooked on painkillers, it makes the dull bit of the afternoon go quicker than two sherries and an episode of ‘antiques roadshow’.
But at least it was a proper chemical cure. When faced with a complex problem or illness there’s nothing worse than these quack cures that homoeopathists peddle - shoving a banana up your arse to cure a headache or whatever (peel it first - you don’t want to look stupid). The purveyors of quack cures should, at least, be honest in their trade, possibly by ditching the white lab coat and simply rolling into town in a horse-drawn wagon, pulling up in the town square and putting on a medicine show flogging ‘Professor McTeeths all-nachural-snakebite-liniment’, a patent cure-all for warts, coughs, lost limbs, teenage boys playing with themselves and, if you drink the stuff, sobriety.
Of course there is a school of thought that you can treat just about anything with alcohol. For instance the belief that a ‘hot toddy’ can have a positive benefit on a cold is so widespread that it’s a wonder you can’t get Glenfiddich on the NHS. Certainly there’s a time and a place for alcohol in the treatment of illness; having a drink to celebrate your hangover dissipating or knocking back an enormous gin while you tell your friends the tale of how you came to lose your arm, while standing on your brand-new tiger skin rug.
(Painful pelvis sounds like a right pain in the arse…and hip, and whole pelvisish region. Hope you are once more able to frolic like a spring lamb on speed soon).
Labels: CiF, Comment is free, Drink, Guardian, Illness, Lucy mangan, Medication, Partial repost, Repost
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