How did we survive the olden days?

[AnneLovesGilbert]

I watched a film last night, it wasn’t amazing but it got me thinking again about how so many people survived how awful life must have been so we’d end up here. A woman was giving birth on a muddy floor in a grim looking freezing cold castle. My mum wouldn’t have made it, so I wouldn’t be here and none of my younger siblings would exist. If I miraculously had I wouldn’t have survived several childhood illnesses, never mind appendicitis and the other things modern medicine has saved me from.

The film was about Mary queen of Scots so set in the mid 16th century and maternal and infant mortality was incredibly high but it wasn’t just that. Those women will have survived so many things to even get old enough to get pregnant. And how many men died in the endless sodding wars.

Baffles me.

People generally had more children than we have now. Some survived.
Just numbers really.

I wonder about this too sometimes, but humans as a species seem to be pretty resilient. Our bodies and minds can cope with a lot of things.

We didn't survive then. They did. And their life experiences and expectations were very different. That's how they survived, when they did.

Individuals may have died, but the population survived.

We are, today, rich and spoilt beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors. I am not wealthy by modern standards and yet I'm sitting in a warm, waterproof room with carpet on the floor and glass in the windows. I have comfortable furniture and many more clothes than I need. I can go to my kitchen and have a choice of exotic fruit and vegetables. I can eat meat every day, if I choose, and have fresh bread and milk. I have (far too much) chocolate and other luxury sweets. I have ice cream! I have a shelf full of books. I have medicine which does not cripple me financially. I do not need to fear being ill or injured. Even just 4 generations ago this level of luxury would have been unthinkable.

We really do lose sight of just how lucky we are, sometimes.

Well, lots of people live in mud huts or caves or whatever now, they find ways to make it comfortable and it's usually how they always live.

It baffles me how people manage to survive living in refugee camps for years in tents with rats and gangs and whatever, having fled violence and atrocities. But what's the alternative, lying down in the mud and waiting to die?

Not quite the same, but everytime my elderly mum complains about how cold her house is I ask her how my grandparents managed without central heating or double glazing, she never answers me.

Interesting thoughts. I suppose suffering is relative.

The other thing that occurred to me was given how difficult the day to day must have been - even if it didn’t seem so - staggering numbers of people died for their religion. I don’t have one but on the pyramid of needs food, shelter, safety and life would seem more important.

I admit the same thoughts have occasionally crossed my mind. I am far from being wealthy,I am 'comfortable' and manage,but compared to just 4 or even 3 generations ago (great/great great grandparents) I am probably 'rich' beyond their wildest dreams,and living a life of 'luxury'!

I have plenty of clothes,my flat is heated and I can afford to heat it,I never go hungry through lack of money to buy food,I have a warm comfortable bed to myself,and most mod-cons that didn't even exist 150 years ago,such as a TV,electric shower, refrigerator,cooker, microwave, washing machine,mobile phone etc.

Plus,I have (usually) effective medication for my various health issues,and access to affordable dental care. So I do count myself as lucky, even though by a millionaire's standards,I would look dirt poor!

Please watch this. The courage of the people during that time who continued with their lives each day not knowing if it may be their last or whether their family and friends will survive.

I think they would all be saddened at how we are today.

I usually have this feeling when I walk up to a nearby Broch (Iron Age stone double walled roundhouse). Even just the will to haul the stones to the top of the hill astounds me, it's one of my favourite places & always makes me feel more grateful for everything.

Humans are well evolved for species survival.

@Imtoooldforallthis

Not quite the same, but everytime my elderly mum complains about how cold her house is I ask her how my grandparents managed without central heating or double glazing, she never answers me.

That's petty, your poor mum.

My mum shared a bed with her siblings, she had 6. She was born in 1964 so not too long ago. This was in Asia. For a while, she slept underneath her younger brother's cot and her little brother used to pee in his cot...and it dripped onto her... My grandmother lived through the Japanese occupation, she was cowed in the bomb shelter for 2 weeks surviving on biscuits with her 6 siblings and parents. We now moan about lockdown when most of us have internet, supermarket deliveries (ability to order any food we fancy with a click of a button) and comfortable beds. We would not have survived the war. Some of us even have the luxury of refusing vaccines when in the past so many people died of smallpox and other diseases. My aunt had polio as a child and still walks with a limp. This was in the 1960s as the polio vaccine was not widely available in her country then.

It angers me however that there are children in the UK whose families can't afford beds. There is a charity I was reading about in the guardian which supplies inner city children with beds. Our living standards have improved overall but in some ways we have also regressed with the level of inequality.

Watch the BBC series London Hospital Casualty 1900s or the American series The Knick.

Both based in the early 1900s and showing medical advancements in major hospitals. Strychnine used to treat scarlet fever, the development of the X-ray machine causing radiation burns, cocaine regularly prescribed......

It's amazing how quickly medicine has transformed in the last 150 years.

Survival of the fittest isn't really 🤷‍♀️

I use to think similar when I had really bad period pains.
For some reason I was like imagine I was a slave and I can barely walk with period pains but would still have to work the fields. I know now that there was camaraderie and people would cover for each other and help each other out, which still wouldn't be anywhere near ideal but explains a bit some of the survival.
However I'd say on a scale my periods aren't anywhere near the worst people suffer ( other what other people are suffering with).

It is a very scary thought. I never really understand when people harp on about the good old days, even 50 years ago some of what was considered normal still sounds hard and scary

I agree with @Lockheart and regularly count my blessings by comparing my life with that of my ancestors. I know I'm incredibly lucky to have been born here and in this era.

Whenever I am daydreaming about living in a different era, I remind myself how incredible modern life is: packets of ibuprofen and paracetamol cost less than a pound each. We can live without pain in a way that would be unthinkable previously.

@Babyfg do you think that the people who harp on about the good old days are the descendants of previously illustrious families who are now middle class/average families. Life was much more unequal then and while life was horrific for the majority, some did very well out of it.

Like if you were a colonizer working for the British East Indian company/plantation owner in the Americas who owned slaves, maybe you would have profited in a way that would not be possible in the west today. My great grandfather had a rubber plantation (but later lost his fortune) but in his heyday, he had 3 wives; that is generally frowned upon nowadays. American plantation owners would have had the power to rape every slave woman; today prince Andrew is facing the possibility of legal action in new york for sleeping with a 17 year old girl.

When people talk of the good old days, I always think that maybe they have a slightly sadistic inclination and want to live in a world where they can decide to do whatever and whenever even on the backs of exploiting the majority.oh and they think that they would be a member of the elite in earlier times.

Just what my parents survived! My dad was a teenager in ww2 and was a telegram boy delivering telegrams to warships in the docks.
My mum was a child whose father went away to war for like 5 years and whose mother had to care for her and her sister alone, while being bombed, with very little money.
When me and my siblings were babies, it was terry nappies and no washing machine and no central heating. Just a fire in the living room.
They had no car, no microwave, no phone etc etc

Christ, it must have been tough.

Remember reading something about this at Warwick castle.

Apparently life expectancy was about 36. Large numbers died in childhood which skewed that figure a bit.

Life was nasty, brutish and short.

.... and here we are, in the modern day. Most of us descendents of people who only survived their short lives intact because of the wonders of modern medicine. Polio, smallpox etc., all of that stuff vaccinated away through very grateful patients.
These days some refusing the covid vaccine because Bill Gates is trying to spy on us apparently

My grandad (born 1924) used to say that as a treat when he was little his mum used to let him have the very, very end of the candle to take upstairs with him to bed. That was a treat.

I think this is partly why Britain was so successful historically. It was bloody cold and people had to be hardy, tough, and innovative to survive.

While I enjoy modern luxuries as much as everyone else, I don't think that it's good for us as a species. We've become too soft.

If the power grids were wiped out by a solar storm, most of us would probably die.

@MidnightMeltdown Ironically Britain's success as a nation peaked during the Industrial Revolution- mass produced goods meant that the standard of living increased. It also helped that it colonized half the world!

Countries like China failed to modernize; thats why its playing catch up. But it would take a long time before the per capita income is anyway close to the UK. Though i expect the per capita income of tier 1 cities like Beijing/Shanghai will overtake that of Manchester, if it hasn't already.

@Imtoooldforallthis

Not quite the same, but everytime my elderly mum complains about how cold her house is I ask her how my grandparents managed without central heating or double glazing, she never answers me.

You ask her that rather than trying to help her remedy the situation?