Would you still be alive if you lived in the 16th century?

[LittleMosIron]

I would have died aged 7 from appendicitis. If not then childbirth or an infected tooth would have finished me off in my early 20's.

Born by cesarean so presumably not?

I'd definitely died in childbirth if I'd made it that far.

😂I’ll probably die from some kind of bacteria-related disease.

I would have probably died at birth. My mum has a shoulder dystocia with me. I would have then died around 1 year when severe tonsillitis closed my throat up. Since then nothing we would consider life threatening but lots of antibiotics so potentially an infection could have made me septic if I hadn't of had them!

I was born via C Section so neither my DM nor I would have survived. Even when I was born my DF had to sign a waiver and the operation was brutal. It shows how far we have come even since my birth that C Sections are alot safer.

Someone apparently said to my DF that it wasn't a "real" birth whilst he was holding me, you can imagine how well that went down ...

I would never have been born. My dad was one of the first people to be given penicillin - he had pneumonia in the war. Then I would have died from appendicitis at the age of 11.

I'd have died aged 9 from appendicitis or haemorrhage during ds2s birth

No, I would have died in my 30s from cancer.

Depends, if I had survived the treacherous and perilous journey from West Africa, amidst being raped and battered by my European handler and African handler, I would have been forced to breed with numerous strong reluctant stolen slaves. Men who could have been from enemy tribes or even my relatives back home. My children would have been violently stolen from me (the boys) and my daughter would have been raped already by either our master or anyone else for that matter.

Appendicitis, various infections over the years needing antibiotics, preeclampsia. I'd be pushing up daisies by now!

Asthma would have killed me as a young child.( I was hospitalised several times)
If not that then I'd have died from giving birth. (Shoulder dystrocia followed by pph)

Just realised I wouldn't have even been conceived. My mum would have died in childbirth with my older sister. High forceps, prolapsed everything, heavy blood loss.

Come to think of it, out of all the women I know who have given birth, there's only a small handful who haven't had complications or needed intervention. So we'd either all be dead, or left holding our undercarriage in a bag for life made of goats bladder or some such.

I think I'd sooner be a nun.

I think I'd still be here. We are a pretty hardy bunch and I've never been admitted to hospital. Had one straight forward birth (although in 1600s there would have been more!). My GPs lived into their 90s.

Good genes. I feel very fortunate.

I meant that if you had tonsillitis or measles, it wasn’t a given you would die.

Given my love of cats id have been burned as a witch too.

Chances are a lot of us would have died in childhood. Think no vaccinations for some very nasty childhood illnesses. I had antibiotics a number of times as a child mainly for tonsillitis, so I doubt I'd have even made it to adulthood.

Then if I did I probably would have died in childbirth with my first as she got stuck and was a forceps delivery.

That sounds absolutely terrifying for you. I hope you are on the road to recovery now

Medieval and early modern midwives are turning in their graves at this thread.

I know! People are killing themselves off very hastily.

From memory, I think it worked out at about 1 in 6 women; the rate per birth is obviously less but most women gave birth more than once.

Infant mortality is around 1 in 4 in 16th century England.

These are very rough figures and might have been superseded by better research, but it gives you a sense of the order of magnitude; yes lots and lots and lots of women and their babies died but you had a better chance of surviving birth than not.

Whizzing round, cords in hand, as they sort out shoulder dystocias and manage the delivery of placentas (placentae?).

I would have been gone at 25 from sepsis from a tooth infection.

I'm a bad historian and I'm too lazy to cite my sources (I will if someone really wants), but the evidence from medieval cemeteries such as Wharram Percy indicates that people with fairly profound levels of impairment did survive - you can look at remodelled fractures, or evidence of advanced bone disease (or really anything that leaves marks on the bone) and you can see that people often got through pretty appalling injuries and illnesses.

I’d have died aged 3 from severe salmonella.

I’d have died aged 30 from childbirth complications.

Quite. I’m just not sure people were quite as feeble that this thread would suggest.

And the current reliance on ABs will be probably be death of many more.