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Old 05-22-2009, 01:07 PM
Smithfan Smithfan is offline
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Join Date: May 2002
Location: Silicon Valley (California)
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What is the source of that list?

I can't believe that in 1909, in an age of city ice deliveries and when a good many farmsteads had their own ice houses, that no one had figured out how to chip ice off a block and drop it in a glass of tea. My maternal grandparents (both born 1889) and great-grand-parents (grandma was born 1869) spoke of iced tea as if they had been making and drinking it since childhood.

I'm not so certain the mortality rates were all that skewed because of infant mortality. A good many women died in childbirth. And in those days, tetanus often was fatal, as were TB and any number of childhood and adult diseases. FWIW, diarrhea is still among the top five causes of death world-wide.

OTOH, it took a long, long time for some things to change. My father-in-law began working in a drug store when he was 13, in 1927. His first job was washing medicine bottles for re-use -- washing 'em in a wooden sink, no less. I can't help thinking the druggist's cure may have sometimes been fatal!

It also took a long time for indoor plumbing to be universal in the US. In 1950, there were still more outdoor privies than indoor toilets. My family lived on a dirt road on the rural outskirts of Des Moines until we moved west in 1955; we had an outdoor privy until we moved. But no big deal; so did everyone else I knew.

Bill
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