"In the USA one-hundred years ago, everybody who had food to eat expected rather good health, especially if they lived in small towns. The diseases we have today were rare. At that time, the greatest fears were freezing and starvation. Most other deaths occurred during cold seasons from gradual nightly carbon monoxide and tar poisons from burning wood or coal in fireplaces, wood stoves and ovens where houses, cottages or shacks were closed, poorly ventilated or non-ventilated. That created lung toxicity that caused frequent flu and other respiratory diseases. In major cities, many diseases and deaths were caused by the same indoor pollution plus smog from silversmiths and blacksmiths every few blocks. Rarely was there a sky-high smoke stack that pumped the smog high into the sky, diluting the toxic particles. Also, many factories, homes and buildings used coal-burning furnaces that vaporized mercury into the air. Heavy metal poisons were constantly in the air as they are today but they were held in concentrations in households and narrow streets. When animals are exposed to such air-pollution as coal dust and vaporized mercury, many develop pulmonary diseases like the Black Plague. Vessels for eating and drinking usually were made of poisonous metals, adding to the toxicity that caused diseases of the times. Factually, What Causes Diseases Today ? We are conditioned to believe that germs are the cause of most of our many diseases, that those “germs” are “pathogenic”. It is 99% myth, superstition and false. Animals exposed to all of nature’s microbes do not get diseases. We develop disease PDN #04, Part I Primal Diet Newsletters - Volume 1 (2006) 29 from accumulation of industrial pollution, including vaccines, medication, processed food and household compounds just as they did 100 years ago.(i) However, we have 60,000 more industrial chemicals than we had 100 years ago. Animals in the wild constantly expose themselves to microbes. They lick their and each other's feces and “germs”, including strangers, and never get diseases. The superstitions that we are fed daily by the pharmaceutical, medical and opportunistic bacteria-phobic industries through academia and media, especially television, would lead us to believe that nature is inherently designed to harm and kill us. Academia believes, and indoctrinates us to believe, that most anything from academia and science, even though ideas, laws and formulas change, is truth and the only rational reality. Academia teaches us that science and business are most important but teach us nothing about ourselves and our health. Academia teaches us to revere and accept everything that medicine says is right."