Dead. Insulin dependent diabetic. Since injectable insulin therapy wasn’t discovered till the late 1920’s…
Oh, hell, I’d forgotten about the Rh thing. Being the oldest, I might still be here, but my brother and any other younger siblings probably wouldn’t.
BTW, those who believe they would have been burned at the stake may take some comfort from the long life and career of Mary Frith. There has always been more room in the world for unconventional women than you might think.
Well, I had hernia and cyst operations as a tyke, but I’m not sure if those things would have killed me.
Still, I’d be dead. Chronic asthma since age three. I can think of multiple attacks I’ve had that would have offed me if not for modern medicine. And I’m sure the ridiculous amount of mini-attacks I’ve had would have eventually grown into big ones, anyway. I wouldn’t have made it past 5 years.
There’s a strong chance I would be alive. I’ve had no broken bones, no wounds requiring stitches, nor any dangerous diseases that required medical attention. My one medical weakness is an allergy to mimosa trees and animal dander, which give me upper respiratory distress and, after a while, asthma. If I lived in a household without dogs or cats I wouldn’t have had much problem at all - I would get sneezey whenever I was around horses, but that’s about it.
Dead, age 11, scarlet fever. (almost died anyway.)
Interesting yet grisly little game.
–pink
I can’t say that I’d be comfortable, what with my now 5 or so years old hernia still throbbing away, and my club feet that I was born with. :eek: But I would be alive!
Actually, I would benefit a little, my broken metacarpal (hand bone) from a car accident never would have happened. One night of pain, and 6 weeks in a cast.
Hmmm, doesn’t seem like such a good trade. 
Caught chicken pox at age 21 from my 13-year-old sister. I guess we might both have been goners. And since we’re black, 200 years ago we would have been slaves, so we might not have even been treated – just replaced if we died. :mad:
So, thank goodness for modern medicine and a more enlightened society.
Dead from Type I Diabetes by the age of seventeen.
Severe asthma as a child would have killed me off, no doubt about it. It came very close several times even in 1990s England. The disease appears to have a strong genetic corelation in my family too - several of my close relations, all growing up in different environments, all had this condition, so the odds are I’d have it at any time in history.
However, I don’t think the chickenpox I also had as a kid would have done me in. In the UK, that’s not even routinely immunised against, it’s considered such a minor disease.
Can anyone tell me, just what is strep throat? This may sound odd, but I’ve never heard of it before - maybe it’s an American term. Is it really that serious an illness?
IANADoctor but Strep throat is a bacterial infection of the throat with “Group A Streptococci” bacteria. It’s usually treated with antibiotics.
Here’s a link for more. It’s not usually life threatening.
Strep infections in other places can be pretty bad. I had a friend of my roommate in college that was hospitalized for literally weeks when a strep infection turned systemic.
Let’s see:
Probably dead of strep or sinus/respiratory problems (though I would have been spared all those trips in a VW Bug with my two-pack-a-day-smoking folks).
Being a left-handed Jewish lesbian would have been none too life-extending, either, I imagine.
Ooh, Debaser! I forgot about my club feet! Another nail in the coffin.
What are you people talking about infections not being deadly?!!! If you’d been shot two hundred years ago you were more likely to die from the infection (caused by doctors trying to get the bullet out, as the bullet is self sterilizing from the heat of being fired) than the bullet wound! Penicillin wasn’t discovered until the end of World War I and prior to that there were some topical antiboiotics, but nothing that’d help pneumonia or other internal infections. Heck, Jim Henson died of infection IIRC.
I would have been a cripple.
I have broken more bones than I can remember. Both of my arms, my left leg, my left wrist twice, my left ankle, three ribs and multiple fingers and toes.
Then again they didn’t have skateboards 200 years ago. 
Born a month late with the cord wrapped around my neck 3 times… if my mother hadn’t strangled me simply for being a month late, the asphyxiation would have gotten me next. Also, if the summer bout of pneumonia/bronchitis hadn’t gotten me when I was 13, I probably would have later been trampled by some huge farm animal or gotten run over by a speeding carriage. Damn astigmatism/myopia combo.
Let me preface this by saying IANAD. That having been said…
I don’t think that anyone here has said that infections can not be deadly. I think the idea that people are trying to get across is: Not every infection will kill every person every time. Our bodies have a wonderful system of defense that often fights off infections quite successfully - the human race would not be here today if not for our bodies natural defenses. It is true that infections killed many and were even more likely to kill children, the elderly, or people whose immune systems had been weakened for whatever reason. Because of this, penicillin was rightfully considered a wonder drug when it was discovered. Unfortunately, the general public perception of antibiotics was that they would be a panacea, ridding us with disease forever. And this perception has, in part, led to the over/mis-use of antibiotics that has contributed to the situation that we are currently in today, where antiboitic resistant infections are becoming more and more common.
Uh, I see that I’ve gotten a bit off track here. Let’s take a look at one of the ailments mentioned numerous times in this thread: strep throat. Strep throat is a bacterial infection but it is rarely fatal. (This is not to say that it should go untreated - there can be a host of nasty, if not necessarily fatal, complications that can occur with untreated strep). Yet numerous people in this thread have mentioned it as something that would have killed 'em off in days of yore. What I, and others, have tried to bring to people’s attention is - that ain’t necessarily so. I will repeat what I said earlier in this thread. The human body is a lot tougher than many people think.
I’m hoping that one of the physicians that frequent this board will see this thread and confirm what I’ve said (I’m confident that I’m providing accurate information, but I know that people will take it more seriously if stated by a doctor).
Modern medicine is a wonderful thing, but the human body is pretty amazing all by itself.
…I probably would’ve died last week.
Yes, really. I got one hell of a bacterial infection that just swept through my body, got me sick enough to go to the emergency room for the first time in my life, started to give me pneumonia according to the chest X-rays, and would’ve kept on getting worse had they not put me on a medicine which kills every damn bacteria in my body, meaning I have to eat yogurt (which I hate) every day until I’m off it. I’m still coughing, it’s hard to walk, and I’d believe that it would’ve killed me, untreated.
…Meh. I’m still feeling crappy. So I’m probably overreacting.
I bit my tongue off when I was about 4. Right off. I think that without the benefit of quick surgery, I would have bled to death pretty soon.
I had Scarlett fever shortly after that. I don’t know if would have been fatal, exactly, without antibiotics, but I believe that it can lead to lifelong heart problems, liver disorder, and nervous tremor, if left without treatment for too long, so I’m glad to have come on the scene during the 20th century, all things considered.
I have a hearing loss so I may have had a difficult time 200 years ago; perhaps I’d even be dead because I used to get ear infections.
Can strep throat kill? If so, yeah, I’d be dead.
Lessee. Last December, I developed a nasty infection in my right kidney, due to a congenital blockage in the ureter. If that didn’t kill me (and it might have eventually, slowly and very painfully), than at least my life expectancy would have been considerably shortened. That is, I could expect to have total failure of that kidney by my mid-thirties.
I was going to say that I would not have full use of the middle finger on my right hand, but that wound was caused by a Swiss Army knife in a moving car. Not a problem 200 years ago.