Learning From History? Maybe Not
I'm a huge genealogy and history buff. While recently looking over the "Biennial Report of the State Board of Health (1902-1903)" for Kentucky, I came across this report from the county doctor, T. Atchison Frazer, MD.
Dr. Frazer was in the era of the old-time who road rode horseback, carrying his saddle-bags well filled with various drugs and remedies for the prevailing diseases of the time like typhoid and smallpox. Doctors' duties back then included "making the rounds," (surely the source of the saying today), come "hell or high water."
In the report I mentioned, Dr. Frazer wrote, "The chief difficulty of health officers is the lack of funds and the ignorance of the people regarding sanitation; and the thing most needed is to get the fiscal court to realize that money expended to improve sanitary conditions is a good investment."
Many county doctors, back 100 years ago, were complaining about lack of funding. Rings familiar, doesn't it?