Chalk up another likely appendicitis victim here, just over a year ago. Or two hundred and one years ago. Whichever.
My work ethic.
Blood poisoning, then strep, and finally tetanus. So I’m on Life #4.
Laudanum.
Don’t know whether vaccinations throughout my life have prevented fatal illness. Polio, tetanus, pneumonia, bad flu, Swine flu, smallpox (risk gone now). Plus a few ailments that might or might not have killed me without treatment.
1 Like
I’m not sure what would have got me first… I tested TB tine-positive at 14, so I imagine consumption might have done it.
And, not to be a total bummer, but the other option for my doppelganger? Lynching. Being the 19th century and all, and the general feelings towards "loud mouthed, uppity negress"es.
1 Like
Like many others, any number of diseases might have gotten me in the pre-vaccine era, but maybe not. I contract bugs and infections very, very rarely, and generally get over them quite quickly. I’ve never been hospitalized, never broken any bones, never taken medicine stronger than Amoxicillin or Tylenol, except when I had a broken tooth pulled the day before my wedding (I took a relatively strong painkiller for 2 days because of that). It’s possible that strep throat might have cut me down in the pre-antibiotics era.
I suspect I probably would have ended my days blind from syphilis and run down by a pennyfarthing in the Stingaree. The late twentieth century offered me too few opportunities for decadent vice.
Life #2 for me, C-section with a big baby.
But what about my husband? He requires a really strong perscription for his glasses. Would he have fallen into some hole by now or just basically be blind?
I have thought about this question many times in the past.
1 Like
My 17th-18th century great*6-grandfather lived to be over 100, and lots of my relatives lived to over 90 back then.
The Biblical line about “threescore years and ten, or if by reason of strength, fourscore” wasn’t mythology; most people could hope to live to 70-80 if they didn’t die in childhood, or get killed by wars, fights, accidents, childbirth, or random epidemics, and if they didn’t starve in a famine. Disease during early childhood was probably the biggest killer.
Penicillin did save me from disease when I was about 8, though; I’d probably have ended up dead or crippled without it. On the other hand, measles didn’t kill me, and neither did the 20th century’s biggest potential killer, nuclear war.
Easy. I would never have stopped smoking.
1985 and going strong.
If I hadn’t died in the womb (emergency C-section) I’d probably be dead of thyroid failure now. My first was born with the cord around her neck, and that could have killed her – interestingly, a medieval midwife would probably have detected and fixed it, but I have no such confidence in 19th-century doctors.
Pitchfork-wielding mob, just like every other century.
1 Like
You’d be safe enough in my 21st century neighborhood. Nobody owns their own lawn care equipment anymore, and those who do will be brandishing leafblowers at you rather than pitchforks.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
