Thread by @tamanosou

Actually there's another thing on my mind. People always ask me what period of history I would like to live in. And guys, I'm a palaeopathologist. In my research the hardest thing to find is a non f-ed up skeleton. I will explain. Not because you asked me, jut because.

So first things first, infant and child mortality in the past was super high because no vaccines. Also a lot of populations particularly transitional populations were basically starving. Surviving infectious disease while you're extremely malnourished is hard.

They also didn't have penicillin. So you could survive a bad infection but your chances weren't great and you would be in for a ROUGH ride. Oh yeah and you can get fatal infections from bad dental hygiene.

Speaking of which, there were several populations that just removed some or all of their teeth either for cultural reasons, to mark occasions or because teeth are a massive faff so why bother anyways. In some situations teeth would be pulled to serve as dentures.

A particularly gory example of this last but sadly not uncommon is a set of dentures made for George Washington which were made from teeth pulled from slaves.

And then there's just general hygiene. You can just run to the toilet or take a shower whenever you want. Our ancestors had creative ways of taking a dump or bathing or peeing and all of them are both hilarious and awful.

In many of the 18th c. European courts ladies who had to stand in attendance would slip bowls under their dresses and just pee right there. In Edo Japan there was this kinda stick that they used as toilet paper. You read that correctly.

It was said of the Mongols that they did not bathe at all which I think is a bit far fetched, but then again the "Vikings" were considered fabulously clean and they bathed only once a week.

And then there's the living situation. In most of these cases you're hauling your own water. In some situations you cannot drink the water and may drink only milk (this is before pasteurization btw), or something which has been fermented.

You will not have air conditioning or heating unless you make a fire and there are no matches. You either keep a wick going or each and every time do the whole firestarter thing.

Many of you would be living with animals by which I mean you bring your cows into your home because otherwise they'll freeze. This, btw is how you get tuberculosis. And also some really cool trauma.

If you take shortcuts in hunting because you're tired from all that pooping in a hole you just dug then you might end up spreading bubonic plague for which there was no cure.

There were also no FDA regulations meaning if a crop became infected with for example ergot, you were going to have some fun time hallucinations and possibly lose the use of your legs. For the rest of your life.

If you are a woman there are no pads or tampons. In some cultures you will be banished to the wilderness whilst menstruating and in others you just sort of bleed down your legs. (Some did have proto-pads, but you have to wash them. You. Personally. With your hands.)

I mentioned fermentation before. Well yes you will always be drunk but again, no regulations on that meaning you might just randomly lose your vision.

Let's say that you're rich and can afford whatever you want. Well, then you're going to get gout which untreated can include not only super painful feet but also fusion of the spine.

And even if you are rich there's some things you just might not have access to depending on the area of the world you're in. These include tomatoes, chocolate, avocados, broccoli, pepper, cinnamon, sugar, potatoes, coffee, tea, and corn. Oh, and eggs are a luxury.

So yeah. It's fun to study the past but I would never want to live in it.