Reflect on your daily life for a moment. Would you do things the same way if the nearest hospital were two centuries away?
Would you dare that bungee jump?
Would you drive to your friend’s house in shorts and flip flops when the snow is piled high left and right?
Denney Home Place 
Most people live their entire lives without ever visiting a hospital. I have known many here in a city with many hospitals, all conveniently situated who have never been to one from birth to death. I was born in one. Visited five other times in sixty years. Three because of illness and two because of accidents.
I have always been grateful to get there and always grateful to leave.
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We, too, appreciate hospitals when we need them.
The vast majority of humanity, however, never visited a hospital because they didn’t exist to begin with. People then were a good bit less reckless with their health and safety, I dare say, because even a small cut or cold feet could mean death.
We tend to be further removed from nature than most people in history ever had the luxury to be, and so we tend to do stupid things because we know there is a safety net (like a hospital) in place that will fix us up. But it isn’t very smart to do yourself harm, or be careless about your health and safety, just because you know it can probably be fixed again.
Hence, it would do us good to reconsider the kinds of things we do, attune ourselves to nature again and stop self-destructive habits and behaviors.
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Something to ponder, how has our general perception of risk changed since Germ Theory became scientific fact? One of my great heroes, John Augustus Roebling, bridge builder extraordinaire including my favorite the Brooklyn Bridge
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…oops… John, a brilliant man, died of gangrene prematurely and unnecessarily because he refused to be treated by doctors to clean a dress his wounded foot. Germ Theory was a foolish belief system to him. In lieu of modern medical attention he designed, had built and insisted upon using a water bath to submerge his damaged foot in. His custom foot bath pumped dirty water continuously over the necrotic tissue until during sensible interventions doctors advised that his foot required amputation. John refused this procedure as all subsequent procedures until he succumbed finally to sepsis and passed into history never to witness his greatest creation completed.
The strength of John’s beliefs overpowered his reason. We moderns “see” germs on door knobs, countertops and toilet seats even though our eyes are not capable of such resolution. John was a bonified member of the Cold Water Society. A man’s got to know his limitations as Dirty Harry said.
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Yes, too much of a good thing there either way if you are “germophobic” or not concerned enough about them. I believe that “Every child should have eaten a peck of dirt by the time they are grown up.” holds more truth than not, not necessarily because of the literal peck of dirt, but because of the implication that the child would have spent a good deal of playtime outside in said dirt.
Somewhere between recklessness and excessive carefulness lie health and safety, or so it would seem.
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