The hazards of Medieval life

DS86DS

Very good article; 25 reasons you'll be glad you weren't alive in Medieval Times

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/list25.com/25-reasons-youll-be-glad-you-dont-live-in-medieval-times/amp/

Between high infant mortality

The constant threat of starvation from a bad harvest due to bad weather

City and town rivers that acted as open sewers for the feces and urine of thousands of people.....as well as the dumping ground for butchers and tanners..........one can only imagine the stink

Unpaved streets where a few weeks of rain would result in all of the feces, urine, animal entrails, rotting animal corpses and animal manure been flushed into the streets

No anesthetic in surgery nor qualified surgeons to do surgery on you. If you had a toothache, your local barber would pull it out of your mouth with a plyers and without anesthetic........ Surgical procedures also often resulting in death due to infection and lack of understanding about bacteria.

Constant threat of plague and other terrible diseases....... including simple things today that can be medicated resulting in death.

Very basic diet of vegetables and black bread with meat and white bread been luxuries only the nobility could afford.

And much more.


Don't think I would have fancied been around in Ye Olde Medieval Times..... though I'd imagine given that they only drank beer instead of water, it might not have been that bad after all.


https://www.google.ie/amp/s/list25.com/25-reasons-youll-be-glad-you-dont-live-in-medieval-times/amp/

Alrigghtythen

The portcullis being shut after a night on the meade

Capt'n Midnight

No spuds.

MOLF Hunter

I'd have died at the age of 12

Ruptured appendix

RMAOK

Gotta love that trepanning ritual.....

PTH2009

at least you can say you were married without having to go out and pull

arranged marriages are good in my book

Richard Hillman

Basically East Africa without the booze

Capt'n Midnight

You'd be walking around and then someone would shout "Witch!" at you and things would go downhill from there.

DS86DS

Richard Hillman wrote: »

Basically East Africa without the booze

Medieval people literally drank alcohol all the time, everyday. The water was too dirty and polluted to drink.

DS86DS

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

You'd be walking around and then someone would shout "Witch!" at you and things would go downhill from there.

In Medieval Times, they had a punishment called the Ducking Stool to establish whether one was a witch.

It was thought that witches floated, so by drowning it proved ones innocence.

I kid you not.

Tell me how

DS86DS wrote: »

Medieval people literally drank alcohol all the time, everyday. The water was too dirty and polluted to drink.

Computer says no.

Food historian Jim Chevallier examines what he calls "The great Medieval water myth" at his blog Les Leftovers. He cites a handful of modern writers who have specifically examined water in Medieval Europe, including Paolo Squatriti, author of Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, AD 400-1000, and Steven Solomon, author of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization, and looks back at primary sources from the time, which, he says, are always uncritical when they mention the drinking of water.

gormdubhgorm

Readers of this thread might be interested in this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Travellers-Guide-Medieval-England/dp/1845950992

It places the reader in Medieval times on a journey as person from various levels of society.
It is jam packed with detail and facts along the way so it is probably best read slowly.

Cookie_Monster

Shiteburn lane, lol

Birneybau

There's also a place called Gropecnut Lane

hairyslug

DS86DS wrote: »

In Medieval Times, they had a punishment called the Ducking Stool to establish whether one was a witch.

It was thought that witches floated, so by drowning it proved ones innocence.

I kid you not.

If she floats, she could be a duck.

facehugger99

DS86DS wrote: »

Medieval people literally drank alcohol all the time, everyday. The water was too dirty and polluted to drink.

So, not all bad then.

Sonics2k

hairyslug wrote: »

If she floats, she could be a duck.

Or a very small stone.

Franz Von Peppercorn

DS86DS wrote: »

In Medieval Times, they had a punishment called the Ducking Stool to establish whether one was a witch.

It was thought that witches floated, so by drowning it proved ones innocence.

I kid you not.

By and large the witch hunts weren’t medieval but largely started in the early modern era. More Protestant than Catholic.

Franz Von Peppercorn

facehugger99 wrote: »

So, not all bad then.

Except the ale was crap.

SEPT 23 1989

No forgetting the constant fear of dragon attacks they lived with every day

bucketybuck

DS86DS wrote: »

though I'd imagine given that they only drank beer instead of water, it might not have been that bad after all.

What is it about medieval life that makes you think that beer would actually taste good?

.......

You wouldnt have noticed the smell because you never lived without it.

And your teeth wouldnt be getting destroyed with sugar and processed food so although they might look like a picket fence theyd be healthier than today.

Id be more concerned about being a woman, women would be popping out a baby a year from their early teens and hoping not to die in childbirth along the way.

topper75

Berties_Horse wrote: »

Who would lance the boil on your backside?

Again the barber.

That is why the red and white poles are still outside their shops today.

The white represents your pale backside. The red represents the blood of the lanced boil.

Fr Tod Umptious

And they ate too much red meat

Keatsian

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

And they ate too much red meat

I doubt your average medieval peasant was getting much red meat.

Ri_Nollaig

....... wrote: »

You wouldnt have noticed the smell because you never lived without it.

And your teeth wouldnt be getting destroyed with sugar and processed food so although they might look like a picket fence theyd be healthier than today.

Id be more concerned about being a woman, women would be popping out a baby a year from their early teens and hoping not to die in childbirth along the way.

While if you were a male [and not upper class] you most likely would be the cannon fodder in any number of wars/attacks/raids. Training for the vast majority would have been; here is a spear, hope for the best!

Most "commoners" also wouldn't be married off in their early teens as well, that was something for the nobles to secure alliances.

The average life span is offset by the huge infant morality rate. So while the odds were against you to reach 10, once you did you most likely lived past 60. It was a true anti-vax paradise.

.......

Ri_Nollaig wrote: »

It was a true anti-vax paradise.

I laughed way too hard at this

Wibbs

bucketybuck wrote: »

What is it about medieval life that makes you think that beer would actually taste good?

They've recreated a few from original recipes and they're not too bad by all accounts(same with old Roman and Egyptian recipes, though the latter was well known for being very cloudy). Most weren't very strong, 1-2% alcohol, though they did brew up festival type beers that were much stronger. Much less hoppy though. One notion why hops was added and then mandated for beer was they reckoned hops reduced the sex drive and would reduce the fornication that upset the church. As it turns out hops can act like an oestrogen and may have that effect.

....... wrote: »

And your teeth wouldnt be getting destroyed with sugar and processed food so although they might look like a picket fence theyd be healthier than today.

Yep, there is an extremely noticeable decline in dental health after sugar became cheap and foods became softer. Before that in the medieval the people most likely to have dental problems were the rich. The rich were also taller than the main population, because of their richer diet.

Id be more concerned about being a woman, women would be popping out a baby a year from their early teens and hoping not to die in childbirth along the way.

Very much so. As far back as Roman times a woman(more like a girl to our minds) made her first will when she became pregnant for the first time. A load of medieval prayers and offerings and talismans are entreaties to god to help women through pregnancy and childbirth. Drownings were also very common among women. They tended to fetch the household water and because they wore woollen clothes if they waded in too deep the wool would suck up a lot of water, become too heavy to move in and they'd perish. It was also a time when men tended to live longer in a reversal of today's trend.

On longevity, yes the mortality stats were shocking, but other than plagues and the like, the biggest influence on the stats was childhood mortality. If you survived that and made it to adulthood, your chances of living to 70 were pretty good and not that much lower than today. A few made it to 80 and beyond. Consider the gospel passage were Jesus says: The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years" written for an audience of two thousand years ago and peasants at that. Consider Roman legionnaires, (depending on the period)they served around twenty years, retired at forty odd and only then were they allowed to marry and start a family(that was often ignored) on a plot of land they got as a pension. They expected to be fit enough in middle age to start and raise a family*. The "ah sure they were all dead by 30" is a bit of a myth.



*to be fair a Roman legionnaire would have been an extremely fit individual. They marched, often at double speed, distances that would seriously tax even the fittest of modern infantry, carrying kit and armour not much lighter than modern kit and often expected to fight and kick arse at the end of it. So a lad of forty after twenty years of that would be as fit as a butchers dog. They would have been very different to a modern lad of forty working in an office going to the gym a few times a week.

BBDBB

Sonics2k wrote: »

Or a very small stone.

she turned me into a newt..........I got better

RMAOK

Fr Tod Umptious wrote: »

And they ate too much red meat

At least they weren't being lectured about the dangers of eating meat wrt climate change :pac:

Wibbs

RMAOK wrote: »

At least they weren't being lectured about the dangers of eating meat wrt climate change :pac:

Though they did go from a much warmer period than today(vineyards in northern England kinda thing) to a mini ice age, so there's that.

Hector Savage

Sure they didn't know any better, can you imagine in a 1000 years the virtual beings existing in the cloud saying how crap life was in 2019 ? - Thank christ we didn't exist then eh lads? we would have had physical bodies and be mortal!!

**** that!

Actually I would hate to be immortal, whatever happens our psychology couldn't take it.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

There was actually a witch trial in Kilkenny in the 1380s, though there wasn't at a time a specific charge for it, the individuals had to be charged with heresy but the allegations were of deals with the devil, sex with demons, drinking blood etc.

The main woman involved was rich, had, to be fair, a suspicious amount of dead husbands even by the standards of the time, and some of those husbands' children from previous marriages felt she'd done them out of inheritances. There'd been failed harvests, out breaks of disease, and constant wars for the previous decade or so. She pissed off a bishop and given the misfortunes that had befallen the town, people proved open to the message of "it was that fcukin bitch there who caused all this!".

It's a mad story, one of the main families involved were the Outlawes, the bishop who went after her was Richard LeDrede, pronounced LeDread. At some point during all this Scotland invaded Ireland and made sh1t of the place. I thought we were friends

There's a good two part episode on it on The Irish History podcast, it's on Spotify and the usual places. There's a good few other episodes on medieval Irish history too.

Grayson

MOLF Hunter wrote: »

I'd have died at the age of 12

Ruptured appendix

I would have died at age 4 due to meningitis. A lot of us would have been dead.

Grayson

Hector Savage wrote: »

Sure they didn't know any better, can you imagine in a 1000 years the virtual beings existing in the cloud saying how crap life was in 2019 ? - Thank christ we didn't exist then eh lads? we would have had physical bodies and be mortal!!

**** that!

Actually I would hate to be immortal, whatever happens our psychology couldn't take it.

If you're living in the cloud a simple software update could take care of it.

patch Tuesday for your existential angst.

Muckka

Great information in this thread.
I always thought the river's would be bursting with fish, but obviously the pollution would have been quite harmful to the equatic life.

Bird's must have been less plentiful too, because I'm sure a few crows in the pot would have been tempting, or pigeons.

mrcheez

It depends on where you lived.

Ireland / UK would have been considered 3rd world, but somewhere like Florence or Al Andalus in Spain would have been nice to live in.

RMAOK

If you had a birth mark, it could be interpreted as a mark of the devil and you'd be burned at the stake - they didn't call them the date ages for nothing....

archer22

Muckka wrote: »

Great information in this thread.
I always thought the river's would be bursting with fish, but obviously the pollution would have been quite harmful to the equatic life.

Bird's must have been less plentiful too, because I'm sure a few crows in the pot would have been tempting, or pigeons.

It's amazing the amount of sh1t that Fish have always had to put up with!..poor buggers.

Ubbquittious

If you got a headache you'd die because there was no aspirin around

indioblack

Wibbs wrote: »

They've recreated a few from original recipes and they're not too bad by all accounts(same with old Roman and Egyptian recipes, though the latter was well known for being very cloudy). Most weren't very strong, 1-2% alcohol, though they did brew up festival type beers that were much stronger. Much less hoppy though. One notion why hops was added and then mandated for beer was they reckoned hops reduced the sex drive and would reduce the fornication that upset the church. As it turns out hops can act like an oestrogen and may have that effect.

Brewers Droop. [Sounds like a small hamlet in rural Norfolk.]

topper75

Muckka wrote: »

Great information in this thread.
I always thought the river's would be bursting with fish, but obviously the pollution would have been quite harmful to the equatic life.

Bird's must have been less plentiful too, because I'm sure a few crows in the pot would have been tempting, or pigeons.

Nah there would have been large woods absolutely teeming with game and fowl.
As one for instance - a huge oak wood spread in those times from below the town of Scarriff in Clare right up across the Slieve Aughty mountains in Galway virtually uninterrupted. A handful of trees remain today.

Yeah rivers took a beating (sewerage, shambles, tanning) if there was a major settlement on them. But many rivers didn't have such.

There were way fewer humans around (in Ireland anyway) to put pressures on nature's bounty.

topper75

Ubbquittious wrote: »

If you got a headache you'd die because there was no aspirin around

Nah just use birch bark, willow, meadowsweet etc.

Isn't that where aspirin comes from to begin with?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aspirin

There were oodles of folk cures to choose from, some of which even worked.

ohnonotgmail

Ubbquittious wrote: »

If you got a headache you'd die because there was no aspirin around

while annoying, headaches dont normally cause death. Willow bark contains the base ingredient for aspirin so you could chew that instead for a similar effect.

Ipso

Wibbs wrote: »

They've recreated a few from original recipes and they're not too bad by all accounts(same with old Roman and Egyptian recipes, though the latter was well known for being very cloudy). Most weren't very strong, 1-2% alcohol, though they did brew up festival type beers that were much stronger. Much less hoppy though. One notion why hops was added and then mandated for beer was they reckoned hops reduced the sex drive and would reduce the fornication that upset the church. As it turns out hops can act like an oestrogen and may have that effect.

The risk of infection when brewing must have been very high back then.

The Enbalmer

No streetlights,no proper lighting in houses either,smoke from dwellings and early industries,animal droppings everywhere,no insulation in dwellings and any nearby watercourses being used as sewers.

Lovely stuff,especially if you're poor!

anotherfinemess

On the plus side no traffic fumes, but this is offset by the constant risk of having chamber pots emptied on your head when you walk down the street

The Enbalmer

Muckka wrote: »

Bird's must have been less plentiful too, because I'm sure a few crows in the pot would have been tempting, or pigeons.

There would've been plenty of birds,there far fewer people and much more trees and countryside.
Large areas would've been private property of landowners who utilized the land for private hunting...esp deers and boar. Any commoner found poaching on these lands could expect an unpleasant punishment.

Birds were easier to breed than hunt without guns and were commonly netted or caught using traps or birdlime.

Most ordinary people would've kept a few animals for food or barter and pigeons were often raised in dovecots for eating.

Birds only really suffered population-wise with the introduction of firearms,poisons and destruction of habitat,the exception being land held by the wealthy who again managed species for sport.

fryup

bad smells.....can you just imagine,

no proper sanitation, horse sh!t all over the streets, chimney smoke, smog and not too mention bad BO from people...it must have been dire, but then again they would have known no better

happyoutscan

....... wrote: »

You wouldnt have noticed the smell because you never lived without it.

And your teeth wouldnt be getting destroyed with sugar and processed food so although they might look like a picket fence theyd be healthier than today.

Id be more concerned about being a woman, women would be popping out a baby a year from their early teens and hoping not to die in childbirth along the way.

I was lucky enough to excavate a few burial grounds back in the day. Teeth were ridiculously healthy.

The Enbalmer

Ipso wrote: »

Wibbs wrote: »

They've recreated a few from original recipes and they're not too bad by all accounts(same with old Roman and Egyptian recipes, though the latter was well known for being very cloudy). Most weren't very strong, 1-2% alcohol, though they did brew up festival type beers that were much stronger. Much less hoppy though. One notion why hops was added and then mandated for beer was they reckoned hops reduced the sex drive and would reduce the fornication that upset the church. As it turns out hops can act like an oestrogen and may have that effect.

The risk of infection when brewing must have been very high back then.

Same as now,mmake sure everything is scrupulously clean,dump the correct yeast into the wort so it can start working before nasties can get in and takeover..brewing was a highly developed science for thousands of years and people would've been cognizant of how to avoid spoiling their booze.

The science behind brewing isn't modern..it was all gleaned from millenia of trial and error