The shade of Dr James Barry cannot even

[oursin]

We rather assume that the Doctor would have supposed that the world would have moved on in respect of the C19th constraints around gender and would be extremely distressed at the present moral panic around non-conformity.

But possibly even more appalling would be the realisation that so many problems of disease had been solved, means of prevention been devised, and principles of hygiene better understood than they were. (I fancy that someone who performed a successful caesarean operation in the 1820s was probably empirically already upon the lines subsequently laid out by Semmelweiss, hmmm?).

And that people are refusing them and throwing them out.

Many years ago I read an sf thriller - one of those 'set in a plausible fairly near future' - in which the protag was a medical professional dealing with infectious diseases, and initially unable to understand why once common ailments that were routinely vaccinated against were being seen in the hospital.

I can't remember whether - it must have been written about the time of population explosion anxieties - it was just that Evil Government was issuing fake vaccines that did not work, or actually injecting the populace with once forgotten diseases, but the end result was the same.

But at least they understood, even if they turned it to Evil, the principles involved, rather than waving their hands and pronouncing woo-woo.