The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming

Re:The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming by hprotagonist on Sunday April 25, 2021 @11:38AM (#26933546)

A term I haven't heard since reading All Creatures Great And Small, where the local knackerman c. 1930 was described as a walking example of the hygiene hypothesis: surrounded by dead animals, and in the peak of health.

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Re:The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming by jpm_sd on Sunday April 25, 2021 @02:22PM (#26935157)

Just started reading these books aloud to my children. IIRC, a particularly vivid passage involves the Mallock children playing with some tubercular lungs, their rosy cheeks aglow

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Re:The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming by hprotagonist on Sunday April 25, 2021 @03:34PM (#26935839)

yeah, that's the one. Toddler sucking his thumb in a pile of bone meal...

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Re:The knackerman: the toughest job in British farming by m463 on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @01:38AM (#26952414)

Isn't the whole domesticated animals thing that diseases only rarely cross animals to humans?

I suspect if he had dealt with chimpanzees if the organisms would have been more dangerous.

as to dealing with humans -- infant mortality was cut way down when doctors cleaned up between autopsies and delivering babies. It was a hard battle ("why should I clean up only to get messy again.")

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