The hazards of Medieval life

Hector Savage · 18-01-2019 12:57pm

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 · 18-01-2019 5:18pm

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 · 18-01-2019 5:19pm

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 · 18-01-2019 5:21pm

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 · 18-01-2019 5:25pm

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 · 18-01-2019 5:30pm

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 · 18-01-2019 5:32pm

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 · 18-01-2019 5:56pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:12pm

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

indioblack · 18-01-2019 6:16pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:20pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:23pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:26pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:28pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:29pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:29pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:41pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:42pm

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 · 18-01-2019 6:46pm

....... 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 · 18-01-2019 6:47pm

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

whisky_galore · 18-01-2019 6:51pm

RMAOK wrote: »

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

Naw, they had the church and fire and brimstone sermons which are much the same thing.

Mr_Muffin · 18-01-2019 6:56pm

I wonder how many of them were vegetarian/vegans?

Wibbs · 18-01-2019 6:59pm

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.

Pollution was a fraction of what it is today. Plus there weren't the industrial processes that kicked off later. Nothing like plastics and the like. Given we've produced half of all the worlds plastics ever made since the year 2000, we're speeding that crap up. Yep. Scary stat to sink in. What pollution there was back would have been small and local.

Ubbquittious wrote: »

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

As noted willow bark infusion would help there. We've been using that since the Neandertals were around, ditto for antiseptics and antibiotics, coagulants, soporifics and so on. They had plenty of such remedies for basic medical stuff.

happyoutscan wrote:

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

Perfectly formed dental arches too, so no need for braces or any of that(tougher diets, more chewing from weaning onward). With few exceptions the vast majority of people from the Stone Age up to around the Renaissance and certainly soon after had very good dentition*. Dentists would have starved.

*Some populations didn't. A good example would be the ancient Egyptians, particularly the wealthy. They ate higher quality breads made from finer flour, ground more than the basic stuff. Problem was the mill wheels added grit to the flour and wore down their teeth. The rich also ate more sticky starches.

There was also a bit of a downturn after agriculture started. Again more starches and sugars came into the diet

Wibbs · 18-01-2019 7:06pm

Mr_Muffin wrote: »

I wonder how many of them were vegetarian/vegans?

More than you might think M. A vegetarian diet was often taken up by the religious. To be fair as an act of penance and as a way they thought to cool the "temptations of the flesh", rather than out of a concern for animals. Just above that you'd have religious types only adding fish and eggs to their diet, avoiding red meat. Leonardo DaVinci was a vegetarian and for him it was borne out of a concern for animals(he used to buy caged birds in the market to let them fly free) and being Leo he noticed through autopsies that older people had build up of fat in their veins and remarkably made the connection between that and a diet of animal fats. That said of all the more famous painters of his time, he was one of the youngest to die of a stroke IIRC in his sixties. Guys like Michelangelo made it to his 80's as did Titian and Tintoretto.

Odhinn · 18-01-2019 7:12pm

anotherfinemess wrote: »

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

Ye wouldn't know what might hop out at ye
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sootikin

https://thekittycats.wordpress.com/category/titles/p/pussy-cat-pussy-cat-where-have-you-been-p-titles/

archer22 · 18-01-2019 7:49pm

fryup wrote: »

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

I remember reading somewhere that in medieval times people did not bathe during the winter months, that job was left until summer.

So I guess like Crocodile Dundee they had a bath once a year...whether they needed it or not

PopePalpatine · 18-01-2019 7:52pm

anotherfinemess wrote: »

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

Nah, the traffic just crapped in the street instead. I'll bear that in mind next time I get stuck in the car park waiting for the Fionnuala O'Carroll-Kelly in 2 tons of BMW Chungus to back out of a parking space.

buried · 18-01-2019 8:03pm

No movies or electronic music. I wouldn't have lasted at all. Probably would have had to get into some sort of actual witchcraft for the craic

Castlekeeper · 18-01-2019 8:03pm

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.

Maybe not in large cities like London but in most cases rivers were fecund. E.g. A common clause in servants conditions when working in the big house was that salmon could be served only x amount of times per week, it was so plentiful that it was seen as a poor man's dinner.

The Enbalmer · 18-01-2019 8:05pm

archer22 wrote: »

fryup wrote: »

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

I remember reading somewhere that in medieval times people did not bathe during the winter months, that job was left until summer.

So I guess like Crocodile Dundee they had a bath once a year...whether they needed it or not

If you were rich you might have access to a bath and hot water. The rank and file peasant probably went without washing at all for the winter and would've been pretty manky the rest of the year too

The hazards of Medieval life

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