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Sometimes the medical treatments would cause more deaths than if they had left the person alone. You don't even have to go back 150 years, example lobotomies.
150 years ago, the transmission of many diseases was unknown. People believed that malaria was airborne. Malaria killed many people. There were still Leper colonies 150 years ago.
If I'd had my aneurysm just 15 years ago, I would have been dead. At the same time, I'm wondering how many things people are dying of now that can be cured 100 years into the future. Likewise, how many things are killing people today simply because the times are more modern than a hundred years ago, car accidents for example?
There are lots of illnesses you would have been much more likely to catch and die from but thanks to vaccines and hygiene those are much less common or in some cases even eradicated now, for the moment. A lot of people also would have died of general failure to thrive which would now be diagnosed as things like allergies, asthma, internal birth defects, etc.
Before the 20th century people lived with death in a way that most don't these days. In a way I think it made them stronger. For instance, today a child dying is quite rare, and society basically expects the parents to be sad for the rest of their lives. In the past, when half of your eight or ten children died before age 18, you carried on, because you were still busy with your other children, and everyone you knew was in the same boat too.
Who knows? Once, twice, thrice? Depends on how long I lived and what killed me.
I was born breech, so it probably would have been immediate. Stuck and no way out.
Might explain my fear of tight spaces...
There were people who lived into their 80s and 90s before we had synthetic medicine. A great deal was known about plant medicines for thousands of years. Many of the things that kill people today didn't exist 150 years ago, cars, airplanes, machine-made cigarettes, prescription pills, weapons more powerful than rifles and cannonballs, fracking causing earthquakes, serious pollution, large cities with high crime rates.
So many were farmers. Some people built their own houses. No computers, TVs, or radios to encourage lack of exercise and not seeing people in person. People likely spent more time outdoors. I'm 66 now and had ancestors that lived to 90 or 91, at least as far back as early 1800s. I was looking through my deceased father's books, and came across an old one with a chapter on longevity researchers. One found 3 people who died around 140; another learned of a person who may have been about 167 at time of death. Even in the last decade or two, heard of a couple women who died in their 120s, France & India.
There's countries with average life spans at least 5 years more than in US. Even in the US, it is somewhat regularly we hear of people living long. I was reading many months ago about longest married couple in the USA. The woman was 100 and excited about living in an age where she could use a computer. Her husband said he's glad he doesn't have any pain at 104. A local paper wrote about a 111 year old woman who lived in her own home, cooked and baked bread. She wondered why anyone was so interested in her, when she's just an ordinary person.
I've been in so many situations in my life between accidents and near misses, illnesses and weather, toxins, that I'm not at all sure life is safer now than 150 years ago.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sand&Salt
If you lived back then, would you have been dead already? More than once? The older I get, the more I think about this, and the higher the number gets!
I can think of 5 or 6 "deadly" incidents, off-hand. Probably why "retirement" was not an issue, back then.
If you lived back then, would you have been dead already? More than once? The older I get, the more I think about this, and the higher the number gets!
Anyone who's ever made a serious study of history and genealogical records has come to the conclusion that people in the past couple of centuries either died very young - due to accidents or illness - or lived to a ripe old age.
There were people who lived into their 80s and 90s before we had synthetic medicine. A great deal was known about plant medicines for thousands of years. Many of the things that kill people today didn't exist 150 years ago, cars, airplanes, machine-made cigarettes, prescription pills, weapons more powerful than rifles and cannonballs, fracking causing earthquakes, serious pollution, large cities with high crime rates.
So many were farmers. Some people built their own houses. No computers, TVs, or radios to encourage lack of exercise and not seeing people in person. People likely spent more time outdoors. I'm 66 now and had ancestors that lived to 90 or 91, at least as far back as early 1800s. I was looking through my deceased father's books, and came across an old one with a chapter on longevity researchers. One found 3 people who died around 140; another learned of a person who may have been about 167 at time of death. Even in the last decade or two, heard of a couple women who died in their 120s, France & India.
There's countries with average life spans at least 5 years more than in US. Even in the US, it is somewhat regularly we hear of people living long. I was reading many months ago about longest married couple in the USA. The woman was 100 and excited about living in an age where she could use a computer. Her husband said he's glad he doesn't have any pain at 104. A local paper wrote about a 111 year old woman who lived in her own home, cooked and baked bread. She wondered why anyone was so interested in her, when she's just an ordinary person.
I've been in so many situations in my life between accidents and near misses, illnesses and weather, toxins, that I'm not at all sure life is safer now than 150 years ago.
What a fascinating post!
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