Who has it better?
The average first-world inhabitant 2021
The average noble 1721
Who has it better?
| First-world inhabitant | 31 | |
| 1700s Noble | 12 |
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Comments ( 22
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Boojum
So many people take so much for granted these days, and believe that life in olden times was much like it is today apart from funny clothes and the lack of technology. In particular, many people just don't understand how antibiotics, vaccines and developments in medicine have made life so much better for those alive today.
In 1720, even those with access to the best possible health care could lose a limb or even die from a small cut that got infected.
If you were a male member of the upper classes in 1720 and you'd exploited your social position and wealth to have sex with lots of women, you were pretty likely to have picked up syphilis at some point. This meant you had a good chance of eventually suffering the ghastly physical and mental effects of tertiary syphilis. But before that happened, you'd most likely paid a doctor to treat you with the mercury compounds that were then considered the best treatment for the disease. So you would have either died of acute heavy metal poisoning or suffered horrible long term effects of this ineffective "cure".
If you were a female member of the upper classes in 1720, your only real role in life would be to look pretty and fashionable and keep popping out babies. Around that time, men were starting to get involved in childbirth, and these were usually surgeons. If your husband wanted to show that he was modern-thinking and wealthy enough to pay for the best possible care during childbirth, you might be attended by a surgeon who had just come from amputating a septic limb, and hadn't changed his clothes or washed his hands thoroughly. So you'd end up with purpureal fever and die in agony a few days after giving birth.Comment Hidden ( show ) -
Meatballsandwich
Even if you were a filthy-rich king in the 1700s, you'd still be stuck without a car, a TV or an AC for your castle.
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Lusty-Argonian
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Sanara
I actually have none of the things you mentioned (maybe AC, but I'm not sure if I have it). They would not need a car since the world wasn't built to travel long distances back then, and would probably have horses anyway. I choose noble, because many people today (according to internet) actually seem to be pretty miserable, hating their job, usually lonely, too much debt and living in or close to poverty (not sure how bad it is, but whether you can afford to eat properly and not be at risk of homelessness is more important than whether you have access to internet)
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LloydAsher
First world person in every single notion if the word rich.
We eat the best tasting food, live in extremely comfortable rooms, every tedious activity circumvented by technology. Have access to lifesaving healthcare and finally DENTAL care being widely available to everyone.
At least you wont be sold off for a political cause for your family.
Also noble is a vague class as it was relative to the specific area.
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Sanara
The one with healthcare don't fully apply to the US because healthcare there is like super expensive and many can't afford it in practice. Dental healthcare I think is expensive almost everywhere, so its not truly available to the poor.
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LloydAsher
America actually does have fantastic healthcare for average people. It's just that when you add in certain conditions where it gets expensive.
The wait time in an emergency room is under 4 hours in america. In canada it's over 12. While it's not the cheapest, its exactly what you pay for. Medicine is expensive to developed you need incentives for companies to front the cost of producing new things because it's not guaranteed that they will develop something new or profitable. Medical R/D is hard, getting it approved is difficult and then mass producing is the simple part. Most countries just need to mass produce it rather than R/D it.
The argument isnt if you are poor. The argument is if you were average vs a noble.
If you got infected when you were a noble you were just as likely or even more likely to die of that days medical practices as a common person. Now it's pretty rare to die of an infection, you usually need to neglect it for it to get to the deadly level. But since germ theory nearly everyone knows what can act as an antiseptic.
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Lusty-Argonian
We don't eat the best food though. I work with a ton of foreigners and they all tell me the food back home is better is fresher and tastes stronger. Apparently we got nothing in African bananas
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Boojum
Interesting that you mention dental health.
Up until the creation of sugar cane plantations and refineries in the Caribbean and the slave trade with Africa starting in the 17th century, sugar was extremely expensive and classed as a luxury on par with spices from the Far East. Refined sugar has been known from ancient times, but there weren't many places in the old world that were suitable for growing it, and refining was an expensive and highly labour intensive process.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the dental health of the lower classes in Europe before the 18th century wasn't all that bad. Their teeth got worn down by things like grit in flour, but cavities were pretty rare. But the upper classes had serious problems with tooth decay because of their sugar consumption. Having bad teeth was a status symbol, and there are even stories about people deliberately blackening their teeth to suggest that they were wealthy enough to eat a lot of sugar.
The OP cites 1720, and that's right around the time when the huge expansion of sugar plantations had reduced the price of sugar enough for the upper classes to consume a lot more with the entirely predictable effects on their teeth. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the cost of sugar continued to fall, and tooth decay gradually stopped being a malady suffered only by the wealthy.Comment Hidden ( show )-
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1WeirdGuy
I find that interesting too. They have pictures of hunter gatherer fossils on google and their teeth look like they could be colgate models 😂They all had perfect straight teeth.
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LloydAsher
They ate alot of hard foods. Part of the reason why our wisdom teeth come in crooked a lot is that by eating soft foods the jaw isnt used to needing so much grinding power, thus less teeth are needed. But since these teeth aren't absorbed back into the body they grow in crooked.
Take a man from prehistory and theres a good chance his wisdom teeth grew in perfectly. Mainly because he has been eating hard foods for almost all of his life. That and if the molar was impacted and got infected it would be a death sentence.
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KholatKhult
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Sanara
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ZREBELX
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1WeirdGuy
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BleedingPain
You could be the richest person in 1700’s, but if you were allergic to foods, you just died. Forget modern luxuries, people back then had shit helathcare and died left and right for “unknown reasons.”
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raisinbran
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Somenormie
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bigbudchonger