Yesterday, the video about “Second Uncle” swiped.
I said that my second uncle’s disability was a sciatic nerve injury, caused by a spanking needle given to him by a rural barefoot doctor in that era.
However, most young people feel incredible, is the rural medical care in that era really like this?
This question brought back my childhood memories of medical care.
This kind of memory is experienced by those born in the 1960s, and those born in the 1970s will still have memories, but those born in the 1980s can no longer experience it.
Before I tell the story, let me explain my family background.
My family is located in the countryside of Zhengzhai Town, Pujiang County, Zhejiang Province.
My father graduated from Jinhua Dongyang Agricultural School. After graduation, he responded to the call of the state and returned to the countryside to become a veterinarian.
Father was a well-informed intellectual in those days.
My mother graduated from elementary school, which was not bad in the countryside of that era.
Our family is in rural Zhejiang, neither rich nor poor. The rural areas of Zhejiang are not poor in the whole country.
Therefore, my family’s medical experience can be seen as a microcosm of real medical care in rural China at that time.
After my father turned 43, every time he complained, he would say, “I’ve lived enough, I’ve outlived my ancestors by three generations!”
My grandfather, great-grandfather and great-grandfather lived longer than the other, but none of them lived past 42.
I don’t know how my great-grandfather and great-grandfather died.
My grandfather’s cause of death, from my grandma and dad’s repeated stories, as a doctor, I can roughly reconstruct some of the plots.
My grandfather broke the skin on his feet while working in the fields.
After a few days, my grandfather’s thigh started to swell and swell so much that he couldn’t walk.
These are very well explained after I became a doctor, that is, after the skin on the feet is broken, bacteria invade from the skin and reach the lymph nodes in the groin, causing the lymph nodes to become inflamed and swollen. This causes swelling and pain at the base of the thigh.
At this time, treatment should be with antibiotics. If there is no antibiotics, even if you take it hard, there is a high probability that you will get better on your own in a few days.
However, in my grandfather’s time, in the Republic of China before liberation, there was no hospital in a county, let alone a rural area. Where will antibiotics be found?
In those few days, a You Fang Langzhong came to the village. Grandma said that he was good at treating bruises and injuries. He had a plaster he made by himself. people post.
Grandpa’s thigh was covered with the plaster. It was summer, and Grandpa’s skin began to break and become infected.
Grandpa went to Langzhong, and Langzhong said that if there is pus, pull out the pus and the disease will be cured.
Lang Zhong continued to apply plaster to Grandpa.
On the last day, Lang Zhong came again and uncovered the plaster attached to the base of grandfather’s thigh. From the base of grandfather’s thigh, black blood began to flow out in a large amount.
Lang Zhong said that the pus and blood should be clean.
Grandpa’s thigh had been bleeding black all the time. Grandma said that he received blood from most of the basin at that time.
Grandpa’s face slowly changed from red to white, and finally, Grandpa fell to the ground.
Lang Zhong panicked, went to the stove and took a handful of grass and wood ash, together with a handful of grass paper, tightly covered the place where grandpa was bleeding, told my grandma to cover it tightly, and escaped… …
From then on, my grandfather was bedridden, and he died not long after he became ill.
At that time, my father was 8 years old, my aunt was 13 years old, and my uncle was still in my grandmother’s belly.
Recalling my grandfather’s illness, it was nothing more than inguinal lymphadenitis. After the plaster was applied, the local skin and soft tissue were ulcerated, and the root of the great saphenous vein was ruptured, resulting in massive hemorrhage and shock. In addition, the possibility of infection , which led to the death of my grandfather.
Dad said they never saw a doctor when they were children until liberation.
The eyes are red and painful, take a piece of tissue paper, stick some urine dirt left in the urine bucket, and stick it on the eyelids, which is considered a treatment.
Having a high fever, everyone is numb. Besides waiting at home, I just ask Xian Gu to shout my soul.
In rural China before liberation, it was not difficult to see a doctor, because at that time, there were no hospitals at all.
At that time, there was not much difference between the sickness of the rural people and the sickness of the animals in the forest.
Time flies, the People’s Liberation Army came to my hometown, the People’s Republic of China was founded.
Every county has a county people’s hospital, every township has a township health center, and every larger village, or administrative village, has a barefoot doctor.
It can be said that at that time, rural China had medical network coverage for the first time in history.
The best thing to do is to get vaccinated. Because it is free, every rural child can get it.
This vaccine has greatly reduced the number of children dying from illness, so that most children can live to adulthood.
This makes the life expectancy after the founding of the People’s Republic of China greatly increased compared to before liberation.
Others, it’s hard to say.
A few years ago, I talked to an old man in the village who was a barefoot doctor in the village.
The village has a clinic and a barefoot doctor. However, including the township health center, the variety and quantity of drugs are very limited. Three injections of penicillin, streptomycin and aminopyrine, plus analgin tablet. It is the standard configuration of township health centers or village clinics. In addition, there are very few other drugs.
The first two are antibiotics, and the latter two are antipyretic and analgesic, used to reduce fever.
My father said that when I was a child, penicillin and streptomycin were rationed, that is to say, a village could be given a few injections, and there was a quota, but it was not enough.
In 1975, when I was 6 years old, I went to the hospital for the first time in my memory.
On that day, I was playing in the village’s grain drying yard when I was pushed through my stomach by an agricultural tractor. The tractor driver is a villager who drives tractors for the brigade.
The adults said that when I was held down by the tractor, my stool shot out “one foot and two”, that is, 4 meters away.
I’m still confused because I’m not wearing crotch pants.
I remember when I was so bad, I just couldn’t shout and couldn’t breathe.
Everyone took me to the village clinic, but I still couldn’t make a sound. I heard the barefoot doctor say that he couldn’t bear it and asked us to go to the township health center.
It was only after I arrived at the Zhengzhai Township Health Center, which was 2 kilometers away, that I shouted out that my stomach was hurting.
The doctor touched my stomach and sent me home.
My stomach hurts and I can’t walk. I’m naturally restless. After lying in bed for a month, I was finally able to get off the ground.
From then on, I had diarrhea as soon as I ate. Until 1982, I started to practice martial arts. After practicing martial arts for a month, I stopped having diarrhea and started to get stronger.
From 1975 to 1982, I had a tummy tuck for 7 years. I went to the barefoot doctor, and if it didn’t work, it was fine.
I have never been to a township or county hospital.
In the summer of 1976, my mother gave birth at home with a midwife and gave birth to my second sister.
In less than a month, my sister passed away. I remember that my parents took her to the county hospital once.
I still dare not ask what the disease is about that sister, for fear of bringing back painful memories of my parents.
I only remember a fairy who said that this sister has a 7-year-old brother, and her life is in danger…
That summer was very hot.
In the countryside at that time, there were no bathrooms.
We bathe in a pond or stream.
Mothers are of course not allowed to take a bath in the pond, and there are many taboos for confinement, and they cannot take a bath at home.
In the summer of that year, my mother and I kept having pustules popping up on our face, back, and limbs.
First, the skin bulges a small bag, which is painful and red, and then the top of the red bag appears white spots. At this time, we use a needle to break it and squeeze it hard. pustule.
The pustules first shed a white pus plug, then a mixture of white and black pus and blood, and finally squeezed out the black blood, and then covered the wound with a membrane outside the garlic or camphor leaves.
I used this procedure for my mother to squeeze the abscesses on her back, and my mother squeezed the abscesses all over my body.
My mother still has the scars from the abscesses at that time.
Dad doesn’t have time to do this, because Dad is going to work in the production team to earn work points and support the family.
In 1979, my little sister was born.
At that time, my family found a new house and the living conditions improved slightly.
When my mother gave birth, on the second floor, a midwife came.
At that time, when I came home from school, I heard the moaning of my mother upstairs, so I ran up to look and saw that the midwife was not wearing gloves, and her hands were working there with bloody hands, constantly pulling out Underneath the mother…
I was kicked out immediately.
Fortunately, that year, my family built a new house, the living conditions were much better, and my mother no longer had abscesses.
Seeing this, some people will continue to ask, isn’t there a county hospital? Isn’t there a township hospital?
Why don’t you go to the doctor when you are sick? Don’t go to the hospital to have a baby?
Seeing a doctor and looking for a doctor requires money!
At that time, urbanites, medical care can be reimbursed.
Farmers need to pay for medical treatment at their own expense.
At that time, farmers would be criticized for taking the capitalist road if they started a side business. Not only would their things be confiscated, but people would be criticized.
My grandfather made a few cakes and took them to the market to sell them.People confiscated!
It was also criticized many times.
So, farmers of that era had no choice but to dig some food in the fields.
At that time, my father was working in the production team, and he was considered the strongest labor force. He was given ten points of work, and for one day, the dividend was 0.1 yuan.
Don’t laugh at the 0.1 yuan dividend. At that time, the adults in our village were very proud of this dividend, because compared with several large nearby villages, this dividend was already very high.
In many villages, the villagers work in the production team, and the dividends are less than 0.01 yuan.
At that time, pork was 0.76 yuan per pound, and it had to be purchased with a ticket.
You don’t have to eat meat, but you have to buy oil and salt, wear clothes, and build houses to live in. So where does the money come from?
Therefore, in rural areas before the reform and opening up, farmers would not go to the hospital until they were about to die.
In the countryside before 1980, it was not difficult to see a doctor. Because they had no money, they did not see a doctor at all.
The competition of natural selection, the rural people of that era were able to survive, and their physical fitness was very good.
So my father, who is 81 years old and still as strong as an ox, works in the fields whenever he has time. My mother is 78 years old, and she often has ambitions to go up the mountain to chop wood.
Post-80s in some regions may still have memories of these.
However, young people born in the 1990s and 2000s may no longer appreciate the hard times, because they have been living in a prosperous era since they were born. , an era of good medical conditions.
I have lived through that era and witnessed Deng Gong’s emancipation of the mind leading everyone to take the road of reform and opening up. I cherish our current stable and prosperous social environment very much. Such medical conditions really come Not easy.