How blissfully easy it is to take a plug out of the plug hole and let all that waste water simply drain away, out of sight and out of mind. And you will soon find that that is no simple matter either: regular dumping of waste water causes boggy patches, puddles, and slippery surfaces. Every bowl of washing up water, every bucket of dirty water from the laundry, everything used to clean the people and the spaces they live in has to be collected up and hauled away to be emptied wherever you think best. Every drop of water that is brought in to the house must now be carried back out. But have you ever considered the humble plug hole? Try living without one for a while. Most of us would recognise the importance and the life changing nature of clean running water piped into the home, and a little thought is enough to make us all appreciate this aspect of modern living. The list of things that I miss begins with water. “How much opium would you like in your cough medicine, Sir?” Even the smallest health complaint can overwhelm you if there is no relief and Victorian medicine, for all its ground-breaking discoveries, remained largely ineffective or terrifyingly dangerous in actual practise. Modern survival rates for everything from childbirth to heart surgery are a delight beyond compare, whilst whole categories of illness have been transformed from life threatening to merely inconvenient. Obviously, modern medicine and dental care are at the very top of the ‘must have’ list.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |