Let’s compare an average American middle-class person with a great sultan or pharoah.
Food: Pharoahs got the best chefs, top ingredients, and rare delicacies. But 2000 years ago, fresh grapes were a luxury item. Advantage: regular person today.
Clothing: A king might don precious gems and finery. Average people today can adorn themselves with diamonds and fine clothing.
Transportation: A car sure beats riding a horse or getting a bunch of slaves to carry you around.
Communications: Anyone can pick up a phone… sure is faster than sending a messenger.
Safety: Great rulers of the past amassed large armies and built huge fortresses to secure their safety from their fellow man. The average Joe today doesn’t have to worry much about that, thanks to police and military.
Sex: A mighty Sultan can afford a harem of lovelies to fend off lonely nights. Thanks to the availability of strip clubs, porn, and the Internet, the modern citizen can safely find gratification for even the most perverse itch. (without turning into Caligula)
Dad used to bring this point up to us kids when he was in an expansive mood, I guess. His example was one (TR, WW?) US president’s kid who got a blister on his heel playing tennis during the (last) turn of the century.
It became infected, and eventually he died, despite having access to the best medical care available. “No amount of money could have saved that kid… etc”)
One thing I have noticed about 19th century contemporary accounts of everyday living was just how easy it was to die by going outside in a quick rainstorm without a shawl or eating a bowl of cherries, or getting “chilled”, it usually portended tragedy.
Privacy. The concept of privacy hardly existed till the late 19th century. Kings and queens, especially, couldn’t dress or use the toilet or eat without a retinue.
Not only the privacy to use the toilet, but the damned toilet itself! I’m a big fan of indoor plumbing.
Also, as someone who wear corrective lenses and regularly takes asthma medication, I often reflect on how it would have sucked in previous ages, going about squinting and wheezing.
I really don’t buy this. You’re saying Elizabeth I or Augustus Caesar couldn’t take a shit without people watching? Somehow I think the Queen was allowed to tell people to let her crap in peace.
I recall once that when visiting the 15th-century Rosenborg Palace (in Copenhagen, Denmark), the whole palace had ONE flush toilet 9it was in the basement). Obviously, the king didn’t walk down to the basement when he had the need-but, imagine, the King had a flush toilet. Everybody has one today!
My family/jealous underling are unlikely to murder me for my position (I mean if they really want my job that badly they’re welcome to it). Plus I do so enjoy showering every day & not having gout…
Why would she want to? Seriously-- if you’ve eliminated in front of people your entire life, you woldn’t suddenly develop an urge for privacy.
Bathroom privacy is a relatively modern invention. Ever see those outhouses with two or three seats? That’s not so you could take your pick-- it’s so two or three people could use the shitter at the same time.
The public latrines in Pompeii survive: it’s a long marble bench with holes in it. There are no partitions or curtains. You would just sit there, next to your neighbor and do your business.
Until the mid to late 1800s, families frequently slept in the same room. A chamberpot was usually positioned on the floor next to one of the bed. If you felt The Call in the wee hours (no pun intended) you would just hop out of bed and use it. No one thought a thing of it.
I just remembered a speech I once heard from Elizabeth II, talking about how she never would have dreamed when she started her reign that she would find herself (and you have to imagine the accent and cadence here) “surfing the net… or rather, watching somebody else surf the net.”
Opium still isn’t nearly as good as Novacaine or other modern painkillers. I read a description of a tooth pulling in Larry Turtledove’s Household Gods, and even with the patient bombed out of her skull on wine and poppy juice (the “dentist” pointed out a wine shop and told her to get roaring drunk before the pulling), it was still a horrendous experience. You may recall what a horror cauterizing a wound was back when they had little other than hard liquor and perhaps some opium to help kill the pain; it’s been dramatized in any number of movies. Remember the phrase “bite the bullet”?
