Are You Pulling the Cart, or One of the Pile Inside It?
Shamus Young has an interesting little thread going on his always-entertaining “Twenty-Sided” blog. He asks if you think you would have survived the Middle Ages?
Think about it. Would you, with the maladies and injuries you’ve suffered in your life, have made it through to the ripe old age of 30? Have the marvels of modern medicine, transportation, and lifestyle allowed you to live way longer than you would have if none of it existed? Shamus has excluded the other everyday hazards the average person faced back then: plague, war, animal attack, having your head lopped off by a passing knight just for the heck of it. Just the “normal stuff” that you know you’ve been through.
My answer after the jump.
I’m fairly sure I would have made it to adulthood. I’ve never had a broken bone nor any serious childhood disease. I did run a very high fever when I was a newborn (and I forgot this completely when I commented on Shamus’ thread), but my folks brought that down with cold baths – something they could have done back then as well. I also had chickenpox when I was 11 or so, but I don’t recall chickenpox as fatal to humans. Aside from that, nothing more than the bumps and scrapes that every kid has picked up. I’d not be an especially pretty adult, what with all the potential scarring (I got a lot of stitchable cuts when I was young, including a couple to my head and one above my eye) but I’m not an expecially pretty adult right now, so I’m okay. I’ve proven pretty durable when it comes to taking the sort of collisions that I’ve seen break bones and severely sprain limbs in other folks. Heck, in high school I was playing flag football without pads and running into walls trying to save basketballs from going out of bounds.
John Mayer may consider my body a wonderland, I’ve always sort of considered it a self-healing demolition derby car. I’m lucky I haven’t gotten worse than I have.
Yeah, I believe I would have made it. Those of you who are less charitable could probably make a case that I belong in the Corpse Pile. I’d certainly not be the most spry of those tuggging at the Corpsemobile. Some of my sprains and strains would not have healed as well as they did. I’d likely have at least a bit of a limp and one shoulder wouldn’t be as strong as the others (sports injuries as a teenager) but I’d be hanging in there. At least it wouldn’t be like the future, where I would have had to go to Sanctuary years ago.
Go, read. There’s a lot of fun happening in the comment section, as folks are gleefully getting medieval on themselves.
No related posts.
Category: Stuff I Like
[...] Robin Z out_totheblack Spider Jimmie phlux Robyrt Anh Minh Arthur Christopher Locri gomi no sensei (Pulling with gusto!) Hanov3r Marmot [...]
Though all I suffered was a sharp jab to my backside and the inability to sit for a week, I likely would not have survived to adulthood in medieval times. I likely wouldn't have survived being born 100 years ago for that matter.
When I was 5 I had scarlet fever. My doctor, who was pretty old as I recall said that he had scarlet fever too as a child. They quarantined him. He survived. But that was hardly a given.