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.

I was raised in a filthy house full of cats and cigarette smoke. I mouth breathed so much my facial bones didn't grow and I went from chest infection to chest infection so I would have died at about 6yo I reckon.

But you wouldn’t have lived with cigarette smoke in the 16th century.

Pipe smoke is a possibility - tobacco arrived in England in the 1570s.

This is true, you would have inhaled a lot of other smoke though, and it becomes more harmful for many during the course of the 16th century with the shift to burning coal instead of wood.

Very true. But I think this thread is suffering quite a bit from people dying of things they may not even have had or experienced in the 16th century so I picked that one as an example!

I would definitely have died in my early twenties, or perhaps in childhood due to lack of antibiotics.

I would have died from pre-eclampsia. That's a sibering thought. My daughter probably wouldn't have survived. Yikes.

No, I was born with a heart problem which has been surgically corrected twice; my first surgery was when I was a baby. I'd have probably not seen my 2nd birthday.

No. I would probably have been dead at 35.

I’m not sure I would have survived my first childbirth at 26 but if I had an ectopic pregnancy and tube rupture at 33 probably would have killed me.

Yes good point!

I would have been disabled, which would have changed the course of my life anyway. But if not I would have died in childbirth - if not before, I have no idea how many times I've been saved my medication or vaccinations.

To be fair, the human death rate IS 100%! It’s just when/ what we die of that changes…

Thank you for this.
I had a fair bit of grief from various idiots about my emergency C-section and the next two I had to have. I wanted to scream sternly inform them about the death rate in nature, but felt it was a bit harsh to burst their precious bubbles.

But UTI’s, can you die from one?

Hence the Baldrick reference!

You can die of any sort of infection if it becomes systemic. But they don’t have the death rate that people seem to be assigning them on this thread.

Become a nun!

I doubt it. Two difficult labours, and much more recently, in hospital with pneumonia and pleurisy - 5 weeks 😱! of ABs. But I’m past my three score and ten anyway, so consider myself very lucky that there’s been nothing else - so far.

Yes, I thought so too. But then my local History nerd said the alcohol content likely was higher because of something plausible I forgot what he said.
He went into details of the brewing of the ale that admittedly I didn’t pay much attention to 😂

I think a lot of people are forgetting we intervene medically in things not because they have a 100% death rate but because we regard 50%, 10%, hell, even 1% as unacceptably high. Or because they don’t necessarily kill you but leave you disabled or at higher risk later on.
Modern medical intervention does not equal ‘would have died without it’ for many of the things mentioned here. Plus there was medicine in the past and only some of it ineffective.

No I'd have died when I was born.

No, dead as soon as I was born

I would have died from a heart attack in August
DP would have died at birth ( born at 30 weeks by emergency c-sec as he had a seizure in utero).

I’d like to put this graph here.
A LOT of people died from various things, and A LOT of women died in childbirth before the advent of modern medicine. So the world population didn’t explode until fairly recently. Even though the 1600’s did see a substantial rise in population in Europe, it was miniscule compared to the last 200 years.

This graph 🤓

edited: don’t know where my graph went

https://www.google.no/search?q=world+population+graph&client=safari&sca_esv=8d1c32b3a5e69dfb&channel=iphone_bm&sxsrf=ADLYWIKV4iUnViUGd5Bw-LSQd6kg1tGAlg%3A1735644520960&source=hp&ei=aNVzZ53SOPXSwPAPheyqmQw&oq=world+popu&gs_lp=EhFtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1ocCIKd29ybGQgcG9wdSoCCAEyCBAAGIAEGMsBMggQABiABBjLATIFEAAYgAQyBRAAGIAEMgUQABiABDIIEAAYgAQYywEyCBAAGIAEGMsBMggQABiABBjLAUjaJlDQB1iTH3ACeACQAQCYAXCgAa4HqgEDNi40uAEByAEA-AEBmAIMoAKnCKgCD8ICEBAuGMcBGCcY6gIYjgUYrwHCAgcQIxgnGOoCwgINEC4YxwEYJxjqAhivAcICBxAuGCcY6gLCAhAQLhiABBjHARgnGIoFGK8BwgIKECMYgAQYJxiKBcICBBAjGCfCAggQLhiABBjUAsICCxAuGIAEGNEDGMcBwgIFEC4YgATCAgsQLhiABBjHARivAcICCxAuGIAEGNQCGMsBwgIIEC4YgAQYywGYAwrxBaeqcNrsz8gUkgcDNC44oAe3VA&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-hp#vhid=0ngFm3NKyPFtWM&vssid=_btVzZ7rHOuXDwPAPzaXliQ8_20