I’ll start with a tale of two grandmothers. The first was a red-cheeked lady — as old as the 20th century — who had been a beauty in her youth and was a character in her maturity. She was rarely ill, but in her mid-seventies she stepped on rusty nail and the wound became septic. Eventually she hauled herself off to the GP who prescribed a common antibiotic. The wound healed, and she lived another decade, long enough to meet her first great-grandchildren.
Sadly, this grandmother never existed. The real one — my maternal grandmother — didn’t live long enough to meet as much as a grandchild. Shortly after giving birth to my aunt, she was bitten by an insect and the wound became infected.