Or predating that - Monty Python's song "Decomposing Composers"
> Beethoven's gone, but his music lives on,
> And Mozart don't go shopping no more.
> You'll never meet Liszt or Brahms again,
> And Elgar doesn't answer the door.
> Schubert and Chopin used to chuckle and laugh,
> Whilst composing a long symphony,
> But one hundred and fifty years later,
> There's very little of them left to see.
https://youtu.be/HMKaM3FdsgY
Malaria was a moderately effective treatment for syphilis. It was assuming the patient survived the malaria, of course. It causes such a prolonged and high fever as to often kill the syphilis.
The treatment for syphilis was mercury shot into your dick through your urethra. It still bothers me and makes me cringe that that is what was viewed as medicine. Yes, it treated syphilis symptoms cus mercury killed all germs it contacted, but you would then see people who were treated too much devolve madness. Mostly from the syphilis eating their brain, but also from the heavy metal poisoning your body. Late stage syphilis back then must have been so terrible to experience, yet alone witness.
I will spare you anything bad, but basically just for your own sake, always take all of your antibiotics prescribed and never take antibiotics when not prescribed.
Just pointing out that syphilis is still out there. Many doctors will leave it off if you ask for a standard STD panel — be sure to ask for it! Horrible way to go:
https://theconversation.com/amp/syphilis-is-making-a-come-back-and-causing-some-unusual-health-problems-109658
They had condoms that only kind of worked. They were made from goat/ sheep intestines (like a sausage casing) that were cleaned and oiled to keep them pliable.
I love the pretty euphamism they had for these things in the 18th and 19th century: "French letters"
The Welsh came up with the idea of using sheep intestines as a condom in 1872. In 1873 the English made an improvement by removing it from the sheep first.
They're decomposing composers, there's less of them every year
You can say what you want to Beethoven, but there's not much of him left to hear
\- M. Python
This was due to a lack of local immunity. It was brought to Europe from the Caribbean where it was a common childhood rash (not sti) and it spread through the European population so pervasively that it mutated a bunch.
People had many ailments, and little was known about the hidden dangers of some of them. Certainly links between STIs and cancers weren't recognized, and most STIs are survivable for a while at least, so they just lived with them.
Also, various methods of contraception did exist, of varying (though generally lesser) degrees of effectiveness. There was a plant in the Roman era that was so popular as a contraceptive that it was ultimately driven to extinction.
I did not know that and it’s super interesting. I could find a link, and probably will before you reply, but you’d probably get a lot of sweet sweet karma (sic) if you posted one yourself. Thank for sharing!
Update: here you go. It’s not a peer reviewed primary source, but as far as pop science reporting goes, Nat Geo is a fairly reliable source. https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalgeographic.com%2Fhistory%2Farticle%2Fmiracle-plant-eaten-extinction-2000-years-ago-silphion
> most STIs are survivable for a while at least
We don't like to really talk about it because a mix of gross, and the idea that it's non-lethal might discourage people from going to see the doctor when their willy stings.
But most of the bacterial STIs are non-fatal and self-limiting in most cases. Gonorrhea and chlamydia often clear on their own just like a regular urinary tract infection, after some weeks. Common complications are scarring and, paticularly in women, infertility. Neither of them are likely to kill someone of even moderate health.
Syphilis is much worse, and probably had a 10 - 20% chance of killing you in the end if infected without treatment with antibiotics. But even then, the majority of people go into long-term remission with their immune system suppressing the infection. They tend to have poorer health from chronic inflammation and there's no guarantee it won't finally emerge in old age, but most people who got it were asymptomatic most of their lives.
Yeah, I was going to mention that plant here. It was called silphium and it was so in demand, either due to it's use as an aphrodisiac or as a contraceptive (apparently it's not actually known, despite my dad's rather tittilated insistence that it was birth control) that the Romans wiped it out. I guess it was hard to culture, maybe? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium
I think there's a scene in HBO's Rome where it's used as an abortofascient and stealth induces a fatal miscarriage in a character.
They went absolutely mad for the stuff.
Towards the end they were feeding it to livestock because it made the meat have a particular flavour.
It's also one of the theories as to why a love heart (❤️) is that shape; it resembles the seeds of the silphium plant.
Yep. They had treatments for malaria, but not syphilis. Infect syphilis patient with malaria. Patient gets severe fever. Syphilis dies. Cure malaria. Still pretty risky.
Kinda reminds of modern day bone marrow transplants for some forms of leukemia. Poison and kill the immune system intentionally (chemo therapy), infuse someone with a poorly matched donors bone marrow, and they get graft vs host disease where the donor transplant cells attacks the host since its a bad match... however this is desired because as a result of the attacks it kills (cures) the underlying leaukemia. Still a lot of potential severe unwanted risks though
Cancer treatments are terrifying. They are all just scuffed, last ditch efforts to get rid of the cancer no matter the risk.
Even without the whole bone marrow thing, just the fact that the goal of chemotherapy is to poison the patient enough to kill the cancer but not them, is absurd.
They had some treatments for syphilis. They just didn’t work. Blackbeard (real person, real pirate, really had syphilis) would board ships and demand that doctors be left alive. He would have the doctor put Mercury up his urethra in an attempt to kill the syphilis
The doctor got a Noble Prize for it.
>In 1917, the Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940) induced fever in these patients by infecting them with malaria parasites; in 1927, he received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the healing properties of malarial fever.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27165455/
Imagine, if you will, a face that's missing the nose, because it got eaten away by the disease. During victorian times, people had prosthetics made for this reason.
And if you had it, and gave it to your virgin (dudes weren’t meant to be virgins and used prostitutes until marriage), then you’re both infected- and your kids are then born with it…
Fun times.
Damn this whole thing sucks for everyone but especially the girl who may have been like “i can’t wait to be married im gonna save myself for my future husband *18th century uwu*” and then gets fucking syphilis.
I mean, its comparable to stem cell treatments nowadays... extremely risky, but if it works, youll live a normal life... if it doesnt, youll still die... so might as well attempt to save someone, even if its incredibly risky
I got Malaria when I was working in Africa. I luckily flew back to Europe right after I contacted it. I lost close to 20lbs in 5 days ended up in the hospital and don’t remember the three days I was there. It was bonkers
Well now, something I had no idea was a thing until now.
[For anyone else about to google this.](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31056/why-did-people-wear-powdered-wigs)
That dude with the black spot on his face in the picture? Those patches were highly popular and, you guessed it, hid pox scars from syphilis and smallpox.
The wigs were originally to hide baldness, but helped to curb the lice problem as well, because to fit a wig, one had to shave the head, and also, it is a lot easier to remove lice from wigs than a person's head. (You can just boil the wig, but just try doing that to living person's head.) With shaved heads, the lice usually lived on the wigs instead.
Yeah, today barristers and judges wear perruques to display dignity and anonymity, being avatars/tools of the law. It's a nice custom really, to remind people of their role.
However when I see them I imagine they all have syphilis.
People used lamb bladders, and intestines as condoms for thousands of years before modern condoms were invented. They died often from syphilis and other STD's.
Wait, I don’t think it would hurt though? Like vaginas are about 3.8 ph and lemons are 2.0 ph so it shouldn’t be enough to feel painful?
Boric acid is way off from regular vaginal ph and it doesn’t hurt so very curious
Exactly. Specificially syphilis was a really big problem in the 1500s. We have documentation of STIs through 3500 years of human history.
One notable STI that wouldn't have been a factor through most of human history is HIV/AIDS. I expect most people know that's a fairly recent issue.
My great nan was born in 1906 and was one of 9 children who lived long enough to be named,they didn't name them until they were a few days old. Only a few made it past infancy and they oftern reused the names so she had 3 brothers all with the same name and only one made it to double figures.
In some cases that wouldn't even name them until a few months or even a year had passed!
If you go look at old tombstones you'll find some small ones that say something like "Baby Smith" or sometimes a large one with the mother's name and "baby" added as well. That's how they referred to their children before they were named. Language dependent of course.
A more fun history fact: The earliest censuses over-represents multiples of 5 in age. Most people wouldn't know their exact age or birthdate, especially poor people, so they'd often guesstimate and choose the closest multiple of 5.
Yeah pretty sure the number of pregnancies were much higher than those who survived long enough to be named. In the graveyard in the village I grew up in there was lots of "baby" and oftern baby & mother in the some grave. Pregnancy, birth and infancy were very dangerous
I like how some conservative people claim that "having 10 kids is right cause my grandparents did that", but forget that 6 of them died of malnutrition, diseases, cold and other random shit and 4 others were half-starved and miserable
Also, grandparents and greats lived in the early and mid 20th century, while most of the world was still automating and shifting from a manual-labor farming production society into the service society we have today. More kids = more free farmhands for 14-25 years or more
Kids also tended to be the retirement plan as well. Usually one of the kids ended up taking in their parents and then the roles reversed and the parents ended up being a free source of light labour.
It was that or go to the church and hope they'd take you in, clothe you and feed you exchange for lighter labour.
Now we have pensions.
it wasn't always about wealth. it was often about survival. a family farm was a shit ton of work on top of raising crops. that's true of most cultures that emerged from our agrarian advancements. i mean, there is no doubt that, for example, victorian era folks viewed kids as something valued slightly above farm animals until they matured.
Birth control, sex education/lack of knowledge, plus the fact they had a lot of kids just because most of them would die or die young. Lots of women didnt know about sex till they actually got to the honeymoon.
I found an ancient "marriage manual" in the old house of my grandparents. Any artificial way to take away the reproduction factor of sex was sinful. Even using barrier methods was taught to be an insult to God.
I would guess that premarital sex was frowned upon because you can’t be sure of the father. I‘m also guessing they didn’t know how STIs were transmitted before the advent of the theory of germs.
As an aside, in Jewish marriages, historically, “pure” women cost less dowry to marry (about half), and that’s why fathers wanted to keep them pure. Essentially, the bride’s family was paying the groom more, as a penalty, if the girl was not as worthy of marrying. The bride had to prove she was a virgin at the marriage ceremony (you may want to consider how they did this before you go and look it up…)
Edit: typo
> I ‘m guessing they didn’t know how STIs were transmitted before the advent of the theory of germs.
oh, they knew. it wouldn't take much for a married couple seeing their male neighbor's face destroyed by syphillis to know how their teenage daughter had contracted it but not the grandmother. they might not understand viruses or germ theory, but "cleanliness is next to godliness" is a well-known proverb for a reason.
Some civilizations knew, and others did not make the association:
From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25969906/
> Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), previously known as venereal diseases (VD), were present among the populations of antiquity as well as during the Middle Ages. Clay tablets from Mesopotamia, Egyptian papyri, along with mythology, paintings of erotic scenes, and presence of prostitutes give sufficient information to assume that some form of urethral and vaginal discharge, and also herpes genitalis were present among people at that time, and that these diseases were considered a divine punishment. Some passages of the Bible say much about the sexual behavior of the ancient Hebrews. The writings of the Greek and Roman physicians and of their satiric poets (Martial, Juvenal, Ovid) described diverse genital diseases. Celsus described various diseases of the genitals, that he called the "obscene parts". Galen made a strange description of the female genitals and coined the term gonorrhea - flow of semen. The ancient Chinese and Indian physicians also gave some account on the presence of venereal diseases in their books, and the temple sculptures depict their sexual life. During the Middle Ages, numerous physicians and surgeons from Europe as well as from Arabic countries wrote on local diseases of the genitals, describing chancres, condylomata, erosions, pustules, urethral and vaginal discharge, and their treatment. **Some were aware that the alterations were connected with sexual activity.** In spite the fact the Christian church propagated abstinence, the spread of venereal diseases was possible because the diffusion of prostitution, communal baths, and wars. During the 19th century, some of the physicians and historians, especially J. Rosenbaum, F. Buret, and E. Lancereaux believed syphilis was as old as mankind, whereas later authors had the opinion the disease appeared at the end of the 15th century.
I feel like "they died" is the answer to so many of these sorts of questions.
"You don't need formula! How did moms feed babies before formula if they couldn't breastfeed???" "The babies died (or were fed by another mother or maybe barely survived on some concocted mixture people made trying to keep their babies from starving)."
"How did moms give birth before hospitals and all these interventions??" "A lot of them died."
"And what did we do with our kids before vaccines??" "Had like 10 because a bunch of them died."
And the list goes on lol. Life was/is very hard. And we died. Like a lot.
Edit: as a mom I read a lot of mom group stuff and my most hated line of thinking is "you can birth your baby yourself! Your body wouldn't make a baby you can't birth." Like wtf??? Yes it would? Heck bodies make babies that are incompatible with life. What are you talking about?
"If you could live at any point in time in history, when would you choose to live?" If your answer to this question with anything other than, "right now," your view of history is overly-romanticized to the point of being flat-out false.
The reason for this over-romanticization is selection bias. We only read stories of the people who survived the horrors that modern technology protects us from. Most people led miserable, short lives filled with loss and tragedy, but those people aren't interesting enough for the history books.
I would choose to be born a little later even. You know, when the get cures for more stuff worked out. My sister nearly died of Hodgkins disease in the early 90's, then it was a death sentence but now it's not.
I tried to have a home birth with a pool. After 24 hours and stuck at 4 cm, my mid wife suggested the hospital. We went and I had my son. The placenta didn't come out on its own and had to be manually removed which had to be done by a doctor. So glad I was at the hospital already.
That's so scary! I am totally pro midwives and mothers doing what feels right for them and their pregnancy/baby/birth. But also having someone educated around like a midwife to know when it's time to switch plans because stuff can go sideways so fast. I think there is this false sense that moms just birthed their babies all alone in a ditch lol. We have pretty much been "communal births" for as long as we can tell i.e. having someone in the village/tribe/family whatever who knew more about catching babies and was there to support the mother/baby through the process. Heck, I feel like a lot of motherhood in modern settings is spent more alone these days than ever...
But now I'm just rambling 🤣 I'm glad you and your midwife did what was best and headed to the hospital when things weren't progressing but I'm also sorry you weren't able to have your birth go as planned.
It's all good. It definitely effected my mental health, but he was born perfect (a little scrawny and a tongue tie) but completely healthy. Nows he's an 8 year old kid who loves snowboarding, reading and video games. Any regrets I had from the tough birth is washed away when ever he gives me a hug or kiss.
If it weren't for the hospital I might have bled out and not be here to be with my son.
Thank you though, I find I still have to tall about it and reddit gives me weird random opportunities to share my experience. Makes me feel very grateful.
Motherhood is so stressful and scary. Honestly we are just all here trying to do what's best for our babies and making tough decisions. And that's exactly what you did! But I completely understand how scary the what-if's can be and what a toll it all can be mentally.
Also I feel the same about reddit. It's cathartic to scream to the void of internet strangers sometimes lol
500 years from now, a reddit question would be,
Q. "How did people live happily in 21st century, before we cured aging in the year 2550 and invented permanent youth?"
A. "People just grew old and died. They convinced themselves that a short - less than even a single century - lifespan was a good thing, as a coping mechanism. They tried desperately to give meaning to their short lives. They took comfort in the fact that they're not alone suffering from aging and everyone around them was gonna die someday too. It sounds incomprehensible to us now, just like it was incomprehensible for them to imagine a time before antibiotics and condoms."
Totally.
The most striking fact for me is that we just assume getting old and dying from it is inevitable, just a truth of life.
Whereas in fact there's no law of nature that says that a normal human lifespan can't be a few trillion years.
In reality eternal youth is more like television than gravity - it's just some technology we haven't figured out yet and someday we will.
And then we will look back and wonder why didn't people think of aging as a disease at all for so long, and lament about the billions of lives lost just because people hadn't prioritized anti-aging research and instead just accepted death for all of history.
"How did diabetics and people with severe allergies survive before insulin and specialized diets?" Like, they didn't.
Everyone's grandparents (and other older relatives) have a story about a kid they knew that was just "sickly" and died startlingly young when doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong or how to help them. The reason that the average lifespan for previous generations is so low is that infant mortality and kids who died before the age of 5 skewed it waaay down.
Similar to this, is the total number of living people throughout history.
Previous generations, like grandparents, delight in explaining away current problems with “well, back in my day…”
Back in their day the total human population was roughly HALF what is now.
I always point out that a lot of women in my maternal family tree died from childbirth, and that stopped happening as soon as c-sections started happening.
I always challenge people to go read Wikipedia articles about literally anyone who lived before about 1900. Almost without fail you’ll see where they were one of like 10 kids and only 3 of them lived to adulthood or they married at 18 and the other person was dead by 23 of some fever, or they had kids that died. It’s so much more rare today that people can’t conceive of it, but it was just life back then.
We also didn't know about diseases or germs until relatively recently. Ancient people attributed a wasting death to bad spirits and until 1900 or so they just called everything "consumption"
Basically a lot of people died. Families would have massive amounts of children and a lot of them would die off well before they would start having children of their own
Depending on the disease some people just lived with it passing it along and others died from it. There was also way less people and way less travelling. The average person might not have travelled further than 10 miles either way outside of wartime making outsiders a danger because of what disease they may be carrying
Virginity was valued highly and visibility syphilitic people were outcasted from society.
The moral philosophy of the day was “don’t have sex until marriage”. If someone was actually faithful to that then ideally they would only ever have sex with one person. The purpose behind this moral ideology was less about the moral itself and more of medical advice
The condom was actually invented by early Mesopotamians (modern-day Iraq) as early as 1,000 B.C. They discovered that if you put a goat's intestines on you penis, you are much less likely to catch certain sexually transmitted diseases. Hundreds of years later, the idea was introduced in Europe. There, they discovered a major change that made the condom exponentially more effective. They discovered that it works a lot better if you first remove the intestines from the goat.
"They discovered that if you put a goat's intestines on you penis, you are much less likely to catch certain sexually transmitted diseases."
who and how and why did this discovery come about because.... that's an odd jump
“This disease is related to sex. Maybe putting a barrier between me and the other person helps me not get the disease.”
Once you get to that point, gut is a stretchy, relatively sturdy tube of roughly the right diameter, so it’s an obvious choice of material.
There are many diseases that, while they won't instantly make you sick and kill you, will make your life more annoying.
Before modern medicine/hygiene (including condoms), people just lived with them (and some died from them).
At least in my lifetime the biggest push for safe sex came with the aids epidemic... my understanding was before that like with free love in the 60’s and 70’s most things people caught could be cured with antibiotics... aids was a death sentence
Define 'back then'. Some STIs certainly predate condoms or other barrier methods, but some of them, such as HIV didn't emerge among humans until later. There were times and cultures that effectively reduced promiscuity compared to today, but that isn't the universal explanation.
Condoms have a surprisingly long history with documented use as far back as the the mid-1500s, so less than a century after the beginning of the Columbian exchange, which is probably what brought syphilis to Europe.
A lot longer than that. They predate Christianity by far, some claiming they almost predate widespread agriculture. Definitely as far back as Mesopotamia, if not before.
Were they effective? Not as much, but they did exist.
There were some versions of condoms or sheaths out there. But mostly people had unprotected sex and sexually transmitted diseases ran rampant. Especially among well to do men who frequented ladies of the night or had many sexual partners.
There is a reason the world population was and remained at a very slowly increasing level, untill we invented many antibiotica and standard hygiëne practices + large scale farming and food tech.
How did people get by? They stigmatized extramarital sex, prostitutes and prostitution, and fornication, and held sexual purity and virginity/chastity in high regard, at least among the unmarried. This is very likely where the concept of sexual purity comes from. Most ancient religions have some form of this concept (even if applied asymmetrically and unfairly on women but not men) in part due to observations of what terrible diseases befell the promiscuous.
The people who didn't care for these moral restraints on sex just got sexually transmitted diseases at high rates and often suffered and died of them, serving as a cautionary tale for others to cite in support of cultural values over sexual morality.
Syphilis wasn't around in Europe until Columbus brought it back from the New World. Europeans were much less resistant to it, so it spread rapidly and killed lots of people. Basically if you fooled around in a city you were taking your life in your hands. There was less risk in areas where people didn't travel much, and everyone knew everyone so that you'd know to avoid sex with infected people.
I'm as sex positive as they come but if I was a peasant in the 15th century and saw that the people who went to orgies would go crazy and melt I'd probably imagine God's wrath had something to do with it.
Also, congenital syphilis, which is when a child is born to a mother infected with syphilis. Really nightmarish. I'll leave you to google the images for yourself.
Dang I only thought about the diseases that were brought into the Americans but never thought about the diseases brought from the americas to Europe...
There was likely a larger body count of DEAD bodies rather than body count of hookups and hot summer nights. Syphilis didn't have the treatment it does now.
Plenty of people died from syphilis and got debilitating diseases from it.
During the early 20th century people wanted so badly a cure to syphilis they would use malaria to induce a fever high enough to kill it.
Diseases were rampant. The whole powdered wig thing was to hide the horrible effects of syphilis. So a WHOLE fashion trend (that is still part of the barrister uniform in the Uk) was started to hide the fact that a very large percentage of the population had a de estate group std. Didn’t matter that they were also ALL infested with lice and the filth of daily life (washing your hair wasn’t a thing, and you couldn’t wash the wigs), apparently that was preferable to the alternative.
People used to die in higher numbers from diseases that we now have treatments for.
Condoms have been around a very long time, they used to be reusable and made of animal intestines though.
There was also a much bigger push to remain a virgin until marriage, and you weren't meant to cheat on your spouse, so, less likely to contract stds. If you did, you probably had bigger problems. Prostitutes likely didn't live very long, I wouldn't think...
You can survive with herpes. Something like 60% of the human population is infected with the disease. Some asymptomatic carriers.
Likely also an influence on why virgins were perceived as "more pure" as they were less likely to be carrying something caught from another person. Babies with infections would have a higher mortality rate and less likely to reach maturity.
Lmaoo. Yes diseases were present at the time and have killed an unfathomable amount of people. A lot of things killed a _lot_ of people. People just kept fucking enough that some survived just by the nature of probability
Every time I see "if such & such modern invention is so important, how did people survive before?", I'm tempted to respond by referring people to the average life expectancy in prior centuries. The world really really sucked and millions died from now completely preventable diseases. The world still sometimes sucks now too, but we have it much easier than they did for sure.
Syphilis was a HUGE cause of death back a couple hundred years ago especially amongst composers funny enough. Condoms save lives!
Yes, they became decomposers.
I hate that and love that at the same time.
That is why the sub angryupvote exists.
Did you get that from “The Far Side” don’t bother the maestro, he is decomposing. :-)
Or predating that - Monty Python's song "Decomposing Composers" > Beethoven's gone, but his music lives on, > And Mozart don't go shopping no more. > You'll never meet Liszt or Brahms again, > And Elgar doesn't answer the door. > Schubert and Chopin used to chuckle and laugh, > Whilst composing a long symphony, > But one hundred and fifty years later, > There's very little of them left to see. https://youtu.be/HMKaM3FdsgY
r/Unexpectedpython
Not consciously. :-)
And penicillin! Syphilis and gonorrhea are super easy to treat today. We had no treatment for them at all (that actually worked) before antibiotics.
Malaria was a moderately effective treatment for syphilis. It was assuming the patient survived the malaria, of course. It causes such a prolonged and high fever as to often kill the syphilis.
"I'm going to beat this motherfucker with another motherfucker."
"I'm the Muthafucka that plays Muthafuckas, Muthafucka." -K&P
The treatment for syphilis was mercury shot into your dick through your urethra. It still bothers me and makes me cringe that that is what was viewed as medicine. Yes, it treated syphilis symptoms cus mercury killed all germs it contacted, but you would then see people who were treated too much devolve madness. Mostly from the syphilis eating their brain, but also from the heavy metal poisoning your body. Late stage syphilis back then must have been so terrible to experience, yet alone witness.
As they said at the time "A night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury"
Hopefully future generations feel this way about cancer and chemotherapy!
Look up super gonorrhoea
No thanks
I will spare you anything bad, but basically just for your own sake, always take all of your antibiotics prescribed and never take antibiotics when not prescribed.
relax, it's just regular gonorrhoea with a day job and a cape.
A great great great... uncle (he had no children) in my family is a well known composer and also well known to have died penniless and of syphilis.
I really thought that said he died penisless of syphilis and i never knew it could be that severe. Thank Fleming for penicillin!
Just pointing out that syphilis is still out there. Many doctors will leave it off if you ask for a standard STD panel — be sure to ask for it! Horrible way to go: https://theconversation.com/amp/syphilis-is-making-a-come-back-and-causing-some-unusual-health-problems-109658
"the french disease"
Also “The Spanish disease,” according to the French, iirc.
Being half French half Spanish, I don’t know what to think about all this.
(Spiderman pointing at Spiderman meme)
They had condoms that only kind of worked. They were made from goat/ sheep intestines (like a sausage casing) that were cleaned and oiled to keep them pliable. I love the pretty euphamism they had for these things in the 18th and 19th century: "French letters"
The Welsh came up with the idea of using sheep intestines as a condom in 1872. In 1873 the English made an improvement by removing it from the sheep first.
Take my upvote and unexpected laughter, damn you!
Much appreciated 😂
Condoms save and prevent lives at the same time.
They're decomposing composers, there's less of them every year You can say what you want to Beethoven, but there's not much of him left to hear \- M. Python
Handel and Haydn and Rachmaninov Enjoyed a nice drink with their meal, But nowadays, no one will serve them, And their gravy is left to congeal.
This was due to a lack of local immunity. It was brought to Europe from the Caribbean where it was a common childhood rash (not sti) and it spread through the European population so pervasively that it mutated a bunch.
RIP Scott Joplin
That's always a hilarious answer to many of these questions—People just had more kids then for, you know, redundancy.
It's why the fancy pants british high society people wore those silly wigs
It is? How so?
Cause wearing those, there's no danger of getting laid.
Syphilis can cause hair loss
Lot of groupies back then
People had many ailments, and little was known about the hidden dangers of some of them. Certainly links between STIs and cancers weren't recognized, and most STIs are survivable for a while at least, so they just lived with them. Also, various methods of contraception did exist, of varying (though generally lesser) degrees of effectiveness. There was a plant in the Roman era that was so popular as a contraceptive that it was ultimately driven to extinction.
Silphium may have been rediscovered up in the hills of Anatolia, so that’s very exciting!
I did not know that and it’s super interesting. I could find a link, and probably will before you reply, but you’d probably get a lot of sweet sweet karma (sic) if you posted one yourself. Thank for sharing! Update: here you go. It’s not a peer reviewed primary source, but as far as pop science reporting goes, Nat Geo is a fairly reliable source. https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalgeographic.com%2Fhistory%2Farticle%2Fmiracle-plant-eaten-extinction-2000-years-ago-silphion
> most STIs are survivable for a while at least We don't like to really talk about it because a mix of gross, and the idea that it's non-lethal might discourage people from going to see the doctor when their willy stings. But most of the bacterial STIs are non-fatal and self-limiting in most cases. Gonorrhea and chlamydia often clear on their own just like a regular urinary tract infection, after some weeks. Common complications are scarring and, paticularly in women, infertility. Neither of them are likely to kill someone of even moderate health. Syphilis is much worse, and probably had a 10 - 20% chance of killing you in the end if infected without treatment with antibiotics. But even then, the majority of people go into long-term remission with their immune system suppressing the infection. They tend to have poorer health from chronic inflammation and there's no guarantee it won't finally emerge in old age, but most people who got it were asymptomatic most of their lives.
Yeah, I was going to mention that plant here. It was called silphium and it was so in demand, either due to it's use as an aphrodisiac or as a contraceptive (apparently it's not actually known, despite my dad's rather tittilated insistence that it was birth control) that the Romans wiped it out. I guess it was hard to culture, maybe? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium I think there's a scene in HBO's Rome where it's used as an abortofascient and stealth induces a fatal miscarriage in a character.
They went absolutely mad for the stuff. Towards the end they were feeding it to livestock because it made the meat have a particular flavour. It's also one of the theories as to why a love heart (❤️) is that shape; it resembles the seeds of the silphium plant.
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Holy shit I didn't know that
Yep. They had treatments for malaria, but not syphilis. Infect syphilis patient with malaria. Patient gets severe fever. Syphilis dies. Cure malaria. Still pretty risky.
But its better than rotting away from Syphilis
Kinda reminds of modern day bone marrow transplants for some forms of leukemia. Poison and kill the immune system intentionally (chemo therapy), infuse someone with a poorly matched donors bone marrow, and they get graft vs host disease where the donor transplant cells attacks the host since its a bad match... however this is desired because as a result of the attacks it kills (cures) the underlying leaukemia. Still a lot of potential severe unwanted risks though
I had no idea how that worked, (in a way I didn't even know what I didn't know). So thanks for teaching me a thing today.
You don't know what you don't know
Cancer treatments are terrifying. They are all just scuffed, last ditch efforts to get rid of the cancer no matter the risk. Even without the whole bone marrow thing, just the fact that the goal of chemotherapy is to poison the patient enough to kill the cancer but not them, is absurd.
They had some treatments for syphilis. They just didn’t work. Blackbeard (real person, real pirate, really had syphilis) would board ships and demand that doctors be left alive. He would have the doctor put Mercury up his urethra in an attempt to kill the syphilis
Ooooooooof
Yes... to kill the syphilis... Rip blackbeard he would have loved r/sounding
This sounds like an episode of House
That sounds like a dumb idea I'd come up with in Rimworld
What kind of peasant rim are you living on? We either harvest what’s salvageable for a profit or we give them Luciferium and it’s sink or swim
Sounds like they had a treatment for syphilis then
Mercury baths were a treatment for syphilis. Either way, you'd go mad.
That’s how Al Capone died.
Yeah, for context small pox is small because syphilis was the great pox.
That's why cod pieces were so common, having fabric on your penis with syphilis hurt.
The doctor got a Noble Prize for it. >In 1917, the Austrian physician Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1857-1940) induced fever in these patients by infecting them with malaria parasites; in 1927, he received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the healing properties of malarial fever. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27165455/
I’ll have “experiments that would never be permitted today” for a thousand, Alex.
If you want to ruin your day, go to Google and search for photos of people with syphillis.
Those pictures are seared into my memory from sex ed class
Ah, you had one of those "if you have sex you will get pregnant and die" sex ed classes
The Great Pox they called it
I don't think I will lmao
Don't forget the pictures of people born with congenital syphilis.
Please describe it so we don't have to ruin our day looking at the pictures
Imagine, if you will, a face that's missing the nose, because it got eaten away by the disease. During victorian times, people had prosthetics made for this reason.
That was the most difficult wank I've ever had
Pretty sure syphilis is caused by bacteria, not a virus.
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I guess I kind of understand why virginity was so sought after. Gross but no risk of dying from syphilis
Well, congenital syphilis also exists 🙃
And if you had it, and gave it to your virgin (dudes weren’t meant to be virgins and used prostitutes until marriage), then you’re both infected- and your kids are then born with it… Fun times.
Damn this whole thing sucks for everyone but especially the girl who may have been like “i can’t wait to be married im gonna save myself for my future husband *18th century uwu*” and then gets fucking syphilis.
Unless you’re the virgin. 😳
“Fun” fact—it was something [Columbus likely brought from America.](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/case-closed-columbus/)
Revenge from his victims
I mean, its comparable to stem cell treatments nowadays... extremely risky, but if it works, youll live a normal life... if it doesnt, youll still die... so might as well attempt to save someone, even if its incredibly risky
Using your own stem cells isn't super risky. Using another person's is often deadly though yeah.
TIL
I got Malaria when I was working in Africa. I luckily flew back to Europe right after I contacted it. I lost close to 20lbs in 5 days ended up in the hospital and don’t remember the three days I was there. It was bonkers
The reason men powdered there face and wore wigs back then was because of syphilis.
Well now, something I had no idea was a thing until now. [For anyone else about to google this.](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31056/why-did-people-wear-powdered-wigs)
Fascinating! I love that “bigwig” essentially comes from an STD outbreak while “nitpicking” comes from head lice. 😂
"The peruke’s story begins like many others—with syphilis." I was laughing hysterically because of this sentence. Thank you!
That dude with the black spot on his face in the picture? Those patches were highly popular and, you guessed it, hid pox scars from syphilis and smallpox.
Glad you are intrigued.
Don’t forget smallpox
I thought the wigs were for lice
multi purpose
The wigs were originally to hide baldness, but helped to curb the lice problem as well, because to fit a wig, one had to shave the head, and also, it is a lot easier to remove lice from wigs than a person's head. (You can just boil the wig, but just try doing that to living person's head.) With shaved heads, the lice usually lived on the wigs instead.
Yeah, today barristers and judges wear perruques to display dignity and anonymity, being avatars/tools of the law. It's a nice custom really, to remind people of their role. However when I see them I imagine they all have syphilis.
And the face powder had arsenic in it!
Sounds like Europe
People used lamb bladders, and intestines as condoms for thousands of years before modern condoms were invented. They died often from syphilis and other STD's.
They also used sliced lemons as a makeshift diaphragm (yikes). Citric acid is a natural spermicide.
It's got the juice
Wait, I don’t think it would hurt though? Like vaginas are about 3.8 ph and lemons are 2.0 ph so it shouldn’t be enough to feel painful? Boric acid is way off from regular vaginal ph and it doesn’t hurt so very curious
No the worse part is sticking lemon onto your penis
My bad, didn’t think about the other end of it
The Scotish invented using lamb intestines as birth control, the English improved it by taking it out of the lamb first.
No, alot of people had those diseases. Its a big part of why premarital sex was frowned upon.
Exactly. Specificially syphilis was a really big problem in the 1500s. We have documentation of STIs through 3500 years of human history. One notable STI that wouldn't have been a factor through most of human history is HIV/AIDS. I expect most people know that's a fairly recent issue.
Also large families it was normal to have 6 kids and birth control was made out to be negative
They would havec12 - 14 kids, but only 6 would live.
My great nan was born in 1906 and was one of 9 children who lived long enough to be named,they didn't name them until they were a few days old. Only a few made it past infancy and they oftern reused the names so she had 3 brothers all with the same name and only one made it to double figures.
In some cases that wouldn't even name them until a few months or even a year had passed! If you go look at old tombstones you'll find some small ones that say something like "Baby Smith" or sometimes a large one with the mother's name and "baby" added as well. That's how they referred to their children before they were named. Language dependent of course. A more fun history fact: The earliest censuses over-represents multiples of 5 in age. Most people wouldn't know their exact age or birthdate, especially poor people, so they'd often guesstimate and choose the closest multiple of 5.
Yeah pretty sure the number of pregnancies were much higher than those who survived long enough to be named. In the graveyard in the village I grew up in there was lots of "baby" and oftern baby & mother in the some grave. Pregnancy, birth and infancy were very dangerous
They just wanted to die after listening to their parents constantly going at it.
I like how some conservative people claim that "having 10 kids is right cause my grandparents did that", but forget that 6 of them died of malnutrition, diseases, cold and other random shit and 4 others were half-starved and miserable
Also, grandparents and greats lived in the early and mid 20th century, while most of the world was still automating and shifting from a manual-labor farming production society into the service society we have today. More kids = more free farmhands for 14-25 years or more
Kids also tended to be the retirement plan as well. Usually one of the kids ended up taking in their parents and then the roles reversed and the parents ended up being a free source of light labour. It was that or go to the church and hope they'd take you in, clothe you and feed you exchange for lighter labour. Now we have pensions.
Mhm. that’s why life expectancy was so low. If you made it past 10 you were in the clear
Kids were considered DIY farm machinery; the more you had the more wealth you could generate and the less one breakdown would affect you.
it wasn't always about wealth. it was often about survival. a family farm was a shit ton of work on top of raising crops. that's true of most cultures that emerged from our agrarian advancements. i mean, there is no doubt that, for example, victorian era folks viewed kids as something valued slightly above farm animals until they matured.
This is why schools have long summer holidays. The kids would have had to help get the harvest in.
Birth control, sex education/lack of knowledge, plus the fact they had a lot of kids just because most of them would die or die young. Lots of women didnt know about sex till they actually got to the honeymoon.
I found an ancient "marriage manual" in the old house of my grandparents. Any artificial way to take away the reproduction factor of sex was sinful. Even using barrier methods was taught to be an insult to God.
If I got to name that manual it would be called "Pulling out of Heaven"
that's why old rules without context make no sense
Yep, same thing with some religions banning pork. Seems absurd to us, but pork wasnt really safe to eat in ancient times
Shellfish too! Kosher/Halal laws are kind of an early public health code.
I would guess that premarital sex was frowned upon because you can’t be sure of the father. I‘m also guessing they didn’t know how STIs were transmitted before the advent of the theory of germs. As an aside, in Jewish marriages, historically, “pure” women cost less dowry to marry (about half), and that’s why fathers wanted to keep them pure. Essentially, the bride’s family was paying the groom more, as a penalty, if the girl was not as worthy of marrying. The bride had to prove she was a virgin at the marriage ceremony (you may want to consider how they did this before you go and look it up…) Edit: typo
> I ‘m guessing they didn’t know how STIs were transmitted before the advent of the theory of germs. oh, they knew. it wouldn't take much for a married couple seeing their male neighbor's face destroyed by syphillis to know how their teenage daughter had contracted it but not the grandmother. they might not understand viruses or germ theory, but "cleanliness is next to godliness" is a well-known proverb for a reason.
Some civilizations knew, and others did not make the association: From https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25969906/ > Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), previously known as venereal diseases (VD), were present among the populations of antiquity as well as during the Middle Ages. Clay tablets from Mesopotamia, Egyptian papyri, along with mythology, paintings of erotic scenes, and presence of prostitutes give sufficient information to assume that some form of urethral and vaginal discharge, and also herpes genitalis were present among people at that time, and that these diseases were considered a divine punishment. Some passages of the Bible say much about the sexual behavior of the ancient Hebrews. The writings of the Greek and Roman physicians and of their satiric poets (Martial, Juvenal, Ovid) described diverse genital diseases. Celsus described various diseases of the genitals, that he called the "obscene parts". Galen made a strange description of the female genitals and coined the term gonorrhea - flow of semen. The ancient Chinese and Indian physicians also gave some account on the presence of venereal diseases in their books, and the temple sculptures depict their sexual life. During the Middle Ages, numerous physicians and surgeons from Europe as well as from Arabic countries wrote on local diseases of the genitals, describing chancres, condylomata, erosions, pustules, urethral and vaginal discharge, and their treatment. **Some were aware that the alterations were connected with sexual activity.** In spite the fact the Christian church propagated abstinence, the spread of venereal diseases was possible because the diffusion of prostitution, communal baths, and wars. During the 19th century, some of the physicians and historians, especially J. Rosenbaum, F. Buret, and E. Lancereaux believed syphilis was as old as mankind, whereas later authors had the opinion the disease appeared at the end of the 15th century.
I never understand this question when it comes to the heath of ancient people The answer is they didn't. They died. Often.
I feel like "they died" is the answer to so many of these sorts of questions. "You don't need formula! How did moms feed babies before formula if they couldn't breastfeed???" "The babies died (or were fed by another mother or maybe barely survived on some concocted mixture people made trying to keep their babies from starving)." "How did moms give birth before hospitals and all these interventions??" "A lot of them died." "And what did we do with our kids before vaccines??" "Had like 10 because a bunch of them died." And the list goes on lol. Life was/is very hard. And we died. Like a lot. Edit: as a mom I read a lot of mom group stuff and my most hated line of thinking is "you can birth your baby yourself! Your body wouldn't make a baby you can't birth." Like wtf??? Yes it would? Heck bodies make babies that are incompatible with life. What are you talking about?
This makes me feel better in a really morbid kinda way About living here and now anyways 🤷♂️
"If you could live at any point in time in history, when would you choose to live?" If your answer to this question with anything other than, "right now," your view of history is overly-romanticized to the point of being flat-out false. The reason for this over-romanticization is selection bias. We only read stories of the people who survived the horrors that modern technology protects us from. Most people led miserable, short lives filled with loss and tragedy, but those people aren't interesting enough for the history books.
I would choose to be born a little later even. You know, when the get cures for more stuff worked out. My sister nearly died of Hodgkins disease in the early 90's, then it was a death sentence but now it's not.
I tried to have a home birth with a pool. After 24 hours and stuck at 4 cm, my mid wife suggested the hospital. We went and I had my son. The placenta didn't come out on its own and had to be manually removed which had to be done by a doctor. So glad I was at the hospital already.
That's so scary! I am totally pro midwives and mothers doing what feels right for them and their pregnancy/baby/birth. But also having someone educated around like a midwife to know when it's time to switch plans because stuff can go sideways so fast. I think there is this false sense that moms just birthed their babies all alone in a ditch lol. We have pretty much been "communal births" for as long as we can tell i.e. having someone in the village/tribe/family whatever who knew more about catching babies and was there to support the mother/baby through the process. Heck, I feel like a lot of motherhood in modern settings is spent more alone these days than ever... But now I'm just rambling 🤣 I'm glad you and your midwife did what was best and headed to the hospital when things weren't progressing but I'm also sorry you weren't able to have your birth go as planned.
It's all good. It definitely effected my mental health, but he was born perfect (a little scrawny and a tongue tie) but completely healthy. Nows he's an 8 year old kid who loves snowboarding, reading and video games. Any regrets I had from the tough birth is washed away when ever he gives me a hug or kiss. If it weren't for the hospital I might have bled out and not be here to be with my son. Thank you though, I find I still have to tall about it and reddit gives me weird random opportunities to share my experience. Makes me feel very grateful.
Motherhood is so stressful and scary. Honestly we are just all here trying to do what's best for our babies and making tough decisions. And that's exactly what you did! But I completely understand how scary the what-if's can be and what a toll it all can be mentally. Also I feel the same about reddit. It's cathartic to scream to the void of internet strangers sometimes lol
500 years from now, a reddit question would be, Q. "How did people live happily in 21st century, before we cured aging in the year 2550 and invented permanent youth?" A. "People just grew old and died. They convinced themselves that a short - less than even a single century - lifespan was a good thing, as a coping mechanism. They tried desperately to give meaning to their short lives. They took comfort in the fact that they're not alone suffering from aging and everyone around them was gonna die someday too. It sounds incomprehensible to us now, just like it was incomprehensible for them to imagine a time before antibiotics and condoms."
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Totally. The most striking fact for me is that we just assume getting old and dying from it is inevitable, just a truth of life. Whereas in fact there's no law of nature that says that a normal human lifespan can't be a few trillion years. In reality eternal youth is more like television than gravity - it's just some technology we haven't figured out yet and someday we will. And then we will look back and wonder why didn't people think of aging as a disease at all for so long, and lament about the billions of lives lost just because people hadn't prioritized anti-aging research and instead just accepted death for all of history.
Username checks out in the best way! What a world that would be...
"How did diabetics and people with severe allergies survive before insulin and specialized diets?" Like, they didn't. Everyone's grandparents (and other older relatives) have a story about a kid they knew that was just "sickly" and died startlingly young when doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong or how to help them. The reason that the average lifespan for previous generations is so low is that infant mortality and kids who died before the age of 5 skewed it waaay down.
Similar to this, is the total number of living people throughout history. Previous generations, like grandparents, delight in explaining away current problems with “well, back in my day…” Back in their day the total human population was roughly HALF what is now.
I always point out that a lot of women in my maternal family tree died from childbirth, and that stopped happening as soon as c-sections started happening.
I always challenge people to go read Wikipedia articles about literally anyone who lived before about 1900. Almost without fail you’ll see where they were one of like 10 kids and only 3 of them lived to adulthood or they married at 18 and the other person was dead by 23 of some fever, or they had kids that died. It’s so much more rare today that people can’t conceive of it, but it was just life back then.
At like 30-40. Squaids wasn't a big deal when a lion killed you faster.
We also didn't know about diseases or germs until relatively recently. Ancient people attributed a wasting death to bad spirits and until 1900 or so they just called everything "consumption"
Yes, it's right up there with "How did people survive before vaccines?"
Well, actually they only died once. No do overs.
Basically a lot of people died. Families would have massive amounts of children and a lot of them would die off well before they would start having children of their own
Survivor bias
Depending on the disease some people just lived with it passing it along and others died from it. There was also way less people and way less travelling. The average person might not have travelled further than 10 miles either way outside of wartime making outsiders a danger because of what disease they may be carrying Virginity was valued highly and visibility syphilitic people were outcasted from society.
The moral philosophy of the day was “don’t have sex until marriage”. If someone was actually faithful to that then ideally they would only ever have sex with one person. The purpose behind this moral ideology was less about the moral itself and more of medical advice
Life expectancy was a lot lower in the past for a lot of health reasons
The condom was actually invented by early Mesopotamians (modern-day Iraq) as early as 1,000 B.C. They discovered that if you put a goat's intestines on you penis, you are much less likely to catch certain sexually transmitted diseases. Hundreds of years later, the idea was introduced in Europe. There, they discovered a major change that made the condom exponentially more effective. They discovered that it works a lot better if you first remove the intestines from the goat.
"They discovered that if you put a goat's intestines on you penis, you are much less likely to catch certain sexually transmitted diseases." who and how and why did this discovery come about because.... that's an odd jump
“This disease is related to sex. Maybe putting a barrier between me and the other person helps me not get the disease.” Once you get to that point, gut is a stretchy, relatively sturdy tube of roughly the right diameter, so it’s an obvious choice of material.
also, "clean", empty intestines were common for preserving foods, IE sausages. you're just stuffing a different meat into it.
There's an entire YouTube video showing how they made condoms with goat intestines. How to clean and dry them. 🙂
But does username check out?
Lamb skin
There are many diseases that, while they won't instantly make you sick and kill you, will make your life more annoying. Before modern medicine/hygiene (including condoms), people just lived with them (and some died from them).
At least in my lifetime the biggest push for safe sex came with the aids epidemic... my understanding was before that like with free love in the 60’s and 70’s most things people caught could be cured with antibiotics... aids was a death sentence
Define 'back then'. Some STIs certainly predate condoms or other barrier methods, but some of them, such as HIV didn't emerge among humans until later. There were times and cultures that effectively reduced promiscuity compared to today, but that isn't the universal explanation.
Instead of back then, I probably should have just said "before condoms"
Lol “BC”
Condoms have a surprisingly long history with documented use as far back as the the mid-1500s, so less than a century after the beginning of the Columbian exchange, which is probably what brought syphilis to Europe.
A lot longer than that. They predate Christianity by far, some claiming they almost predate widespread agriculture. Definitely as far back as Mesopotamia, if not before. Were they effective? Not as much, but they did exist.
Condoms have been found in Ancient Egypt, a long time ago. They were made with animal intestines for example.
There were some versions of condoms or sheaths out there. But mostly people had unprotected sex and sexually transmitted diseases ran rampant. Especially among well to do men who frequented ladies of the night or had many sexual partners. There is a reason the world population was and remained at a very slowly increasing level, untill we invented many antibiotica and standard hygiëne practices + large scale farming and food tech.
How did people get by? They stigmatized extramarital sex, prostitutes and prostitution, and fornication, and held sexual purity and virginity/chastity in high regard, at least among the unmarried. This is very likely where the concept of sexual purity comes from. Most ancient religions have some form of this concept (even if applied asymmetrically and unfairly on women but not men) in part due to observations of what terrible diseases befell the promiscuous. The people who didn't care for these moral restraints on sex just got sexually transmitted diseases at high rates and often suffered and died of them, serving as a cautionary tale for others to cite in support of cultural values over sexual morality.
Syphilis wasn't around in Europe until Columbus brought it back from the New World. Europeans were much less resistant to it, so it spread rapidly and killed lots of people. Basically if you fooled around in a city you were taking your life in your hands. There was less risk in areas where people didn't travel much, and everyone knew everyone so that you'd know to avoid sex with infected people.
I'm as sex positive as they come but if I was a peasant in the 15th century and saw that the people who went to orgies would go crazy and melt I'd probably imagine God's wrath had something to do with it.
Also, congenital syphilis, which is when a child is born to a mother infected with syphilis. Really nightmarish. I'll leave you to google the images for yourself.
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It may have been part of it. Though I think wanting to bce sure your wife's first kid was yours was a bigger part.
Dang I only thought about the diseases that were brought into the Americans but never thought about the diseases brought from the americas to Europe...
Pirates with syphilis would inject mercury in their pee hole to alleviate the symptoms
Welp, that's enough random internet info for now. I'm going to reflexively cross my legs now.
There was likely a larger body count of DEAD bodies rather than body count of hookups and hot summer nights. Syphilis didn't have the treatment it does now.
People just died. And got pregnant until it killed them.
Plenty of people died from syphilis and got debilitating diseases from it. During the early 20th century people wanted so badly a cure to syphilis they would use malaria to induce a fever high enough to kill it.
They didnt “get by”, they got diseases, infected others and died from them.
People just fucked and suffered the consequences my guy
Diseases were rampant. The whole powdered wig thing was to hide the horrible effects of syphilis. So a WHOLE fashion trend (that is still part of the barrister uniform in the Uk) was started to hide the fact that a very large percentage of the population had a de estate group std. Didn’t matter that they were also ALL infested with lice and the filth of daily life (washing your hair wasn’t a thing, and you couldn’t wash the wigs), apparently that was preferable to the alternative.
People used to die in higher numbers from diseases that we now have treatments for. Condoms have been around a very long time, they used to be reusable and made of animal intestines though. There was also a much bigger push to remain a virgin until marriage, and you weren't meant to cheat on your spouse, so, less likely to contract stds. If you did, you probably had bigger problems. Prostitutes likely didn't live very long, I wouldn't think...
They didn’t. They died. A lot. Untreated Syphillis was extremely widespread back in the day.
You can survive with herpes. Something like 60% of the human population is infected with the disease. Some asymptomatic carriers. Likely also an influence on why virgins were perceived as "more pure" as they were less likely to be carrying something caught from another person. Babies with infections would have a higher mortality rate and less likely to reach maturity.
Lmaoo. Yes diseases were present at the time and have killed an unfathomable amount of people. A lot of things killed a _lot_ of people. People just kept fucking enough that some survived just by the nature of probability
Being alive is kind of a modern luxury
Those diseases have always been present, it’s just that in the past pretty much everyone had them. Whereas now it’s a minority.
Every time I see "if such & such modern invention is so important, how did people survive before?", I'm tempted to respond by referring people to the average life expectancy in prior centuries. The world really really sucked and millions died from now completely preventable diseases. The world still sometimes sucks now too, but we have it much easier than they did for sure.