Asklemmy

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You must pick a point in human history before the 1950s to be spend the rest of your life in. What era and place would you choose? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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You would still have the same age, gender, personality, skin color, etc. and you would be able to speak at least one local language and would know basic information of the era and place. Your family, social standing, and such would be randomly picked.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I have a whole rant on this topic, but the short version:

It’s dentists.

The gnarliest mountain man, who hunts bears with his bear hands, can be brought to his knees with a toothache. The toothache never sleeps, can’t be fought, and always eventually wins. Even basic dentistry is life saving - even another human with a pair of pliers and some moonshine - but I’d much rather have novocaine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Dental problems a hundred years ago were not as problematic as we think. I'm Indigenous Canadian and my parents were born and raised in the bush and judging from family photos I've seen from a hundred years ago ... most people had decent teeth. I have photos of my grandmothers parents who must have been in the 60s or 70s and they all had full teeth, probably not the best but they had obvious white teeth.

Cavities and tooth problems are a modern problem from wealth .. we eat too much starch and sugar and generally just eat way too much of everything. Before the modern era, up to about the mid 1800s, the average person ate about five pounds of refined sugar a year - today the average person consumes about 100 lbs of sugar a year. ... and those are the averages! Back a hundred years ago, you were wealthy if you could get sugar ... most people just couldn't afford to eat it .. most people couldn't afford to eat! And they ate more simple diets and less often.

The biggest fear I have about going back to the past is just getting a flesh wound, a hang nail or a scratch that could fester into an infection and either take a limb or kill me.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Dental problems aren't about them looking good; teeth used to kill. Dental disease used to be the 5th leading cause of death. Your great-grandparents aren't the best bar for dentistry in the past as modern dentistry began in the 18th century.