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'm autistic so I'd probably been burnt as a witch. Other than that I've had countless water infections, a kidney infection and several tooth abscess so no doubt one of them would have killed me off.

My mom would have been burned as a witch, if she had me before the burning, I would have died pretty young, I was born very premature. Which was hard enough to survive in the 70s . Should I have survived the birth the asthma would have seen me off about age 3.

I was a very sickly child, so I doubt I would have even made it to my teens.
If I did, more infections would have written me off... and my MH issues would have seen me banished to some sort of shed/camp.

@SemperIdem indeed! It is so misunderstood! Ancient Roman consuls (their prime minister) had to be 43 years old as a minimum to stand, so enough people survived to that age and well beyond.

In teems of the thread question - I think I would be alive but a nasty dose of acute necrotising gingivitis (caused by an impacted wisdom tooth) when I was 32 might have been a bit touch and go.

If I had managed to be born at all ( my mother had hyperemesis) it would have been a miracle.
I was a forceps birth so , if she'd got as far as needing to give birth to me , I'd have died then.
If I had survived all that shit then I'd have died of my own pregnancy. Hyperemesis first then a breech delivery. My pelvis was too small to deliver a baby that way so I had to have a cesarean.

About 1/3 of adult women in the period were single. That's quite a lot of options other than the monastery or marriage ...

And no, the church didn't condemn all methods of preventing pregnancy. The Catholic Church sanctioned chaste marriages if both parties could agree; abortion was considered sinful, but it Church authorities broadly agreed that 1) the foetus wasn't really alive before 'quickening' and 2) it was important to consider context - a poor woman who couldn't feed her existing children being much less to blame than someone who could. How effective abortifacients were is another question, of course.

Would have died at 30 in child birth, DD would likely have died too. Don't know if my youngest two would have died during birth as I went for an early Csection when I started getting the same problems during birth the second time and went straight to a Csection the third time. Youngest would have died at 3 when he fractured his leg really badly and developed a condition that damaged his hips and had to spend a month in hospital and then 2 more months in a cast that covered most of his lower body.

2006 grade 4 placenta previa. Had a massive bleed at 30 weeks. Would have bled out then. Thankfully modern medicine worked it's miracle and I hung on until I was 36 weeks. Ds has just celebrated his 18th birthday. He was over 7lb at 36 weeks and is the biggest in our family now. He wants to be a history teacher 😊

I had Rubella in 1970s as a child and I barely knew I had it. It doesn't make you that ill. They vaccinate against it because its possible impact on a foetus a woman may be carrying.

I probably wouldn’t have been born alive, and my mum would’ve died from pre-eclampsia, but if I had survived birth then I’d have been fine.

The drink of the common people was "small ale" - low alcohol beer. It is thought (by wiki) that it may have been as low as 1% alcohol.

My mum and I would have died when I was born. If survived that, I was born with a kidney issue, sorted at 9, but could have led to extreme issues, or appendicitis at 7 probably would have got me. Seriously doubt I would have made it to giving birth, but my 1st nearly killed me now (lost 4 litres of blood) so that would have been that. Thank my lucky stars I was born in the late 20th century!

I wonder if we will end up with more posts on this thread about witches being burned in the sixteenth century, than there were witches burned? (Trick question; we already have).

I'm just leaving this here. IIRC the author used to be a MNer. www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/eight-witchcraft-myths/

Another one that would've been a goner during childbirth, if that didn't get me the subsequent sepsis would have.

Interesting question OP. I often think how lucky I am that I live in an age where we can pop a pill to get rid of an infection that would've easily killed someone not that long ago.

Wouldn't have survived my placenta praevia, but sometimes I wonder if I might have joined a nunnery in such times like the early 16th Century - to opt out of marriage / potential dangerous childbirth as I think many women did.

There are quite a lot of manuals explaining how to manage different impediments of delivery. It might not have worked, and infection from manipulation might have killed your mother, but babies born with cords around them did sometimes survive.

I'd likely be dead. Had an open fracture from a broken arm aged 33, that likely would have got infected.
If not, breast cancer would have spread and killed me a couple of years back. Or, would I have even got it in the 16th century?

If asthma and scarlet fever hadn't seen me off as a child, I'd definitely have died in childbirth - I nearly did even with modern medicine.

Childbirth or a kidney infection. Not to mention a couple of serious cat bites.

I never would have been concieved. Older DSis was stillborn and needed a lot of help getting out so her and DM would have died before I was even imagined. Actually, DM had appendicitis aged 13 so none of us would have been conceived.

I’d have died at birth along with my mum and twin sister - I was transverse with prolapsed cord, and my sister was breech.

Me too witchy

Noooo. Genetic inherited condition, none of our family would exist.

I would probably have been stillborn sadly as my mum had a difficult birth with me. She is also rhesus negative which would have probably made me an only child. Ignoring that, knocking out my front teeth at 3 may have killed me due to infection if I got unlucky or more likely whooping cough at age 4 or 5. In adulthood I survived a kidney infection and a parotid gland infection that both may have been fatal with no antibiotics, especially the kidney which required hospital admission. And childbirth, especially with DS2 who got stuck and had to be helped out. I think people really take modern healthcare for granted at times, it has been too long since people died from simple things for it to be a real social memory any more (that's a good thing). My grandparents still really feared things like "catching cold" as they remembered people who had not survived infections and it was deeply embedded that this was dangerous.

Well let's see.

Asthma may have finished me off as a child. But if I survived that, I would have died from malnutrition in my 40s due to Celiac Disease or sometime in the next year or so due to critical organ failure as a result of haemochromatosis. But before that I would have been badly crippled due to two multiple fractures that required major surgery. Oh wait, my myopia is so severe that I probably would have fallen down a hole or tripped and hit my head and died as a child. And I certainly wouldn't have been marriage material or able to support myself. So I suppose I would have starved to death. I would have been fine in childbirth, but DS1 came at 33 weeks and DS2 tried to come at 25 (meds stopped contractions) so who knows what might have happened with them.

Thank God for modern medicine!