Wouldn’t you struggle to find vaccinations for diseases that no longer exist anyway? I can’t imagine anywhere storing vaccines for diseases that were eradicated 200 years ago.
Assuming you can’t take back any material possesions and arrive in the past as bare-assed as the day you were born you are stuck with knowledge, not that that’s a bad thing. Lots of the lists people have posted would take far longer than 1 day to learn even if you already had a reasonable grounding in the subject, and learning a language in a day just isn’t going to happen.
Personally, I would try to bone up on woodland survival techniques and hope to become as much like Ray Mears in one day as is humanly possible. I think that regardless of how hard you try to follow the customs of the time and religious practices you are going to spotted as being different in the first half-hour. Even if I were teleported back in time but remained in England my accent and use of language would make me stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. Remember we are talking about a time some 60 years before Shakepspeare was even born, language was very different back then and people would most likely not be tollerant of your unique use of English, I think communication would be so difficult you may as well be foreign.
So, like I said I woud learn survival techniques and stay the hell away from everyone else and live as a hermit, it’s the only way you aren’t going to be strung up for being different.
I’d want to brush up on chemistry, first aid and sanitation. It would also be good to learn about the local plants (which ones are safe to eat, make medicines etc.) If I know where I’ll be going, then, its important to learn enough about the local customs/religion and population to blend in. For example, what an average person in the area would know, and what wouldn’t he know? That way I would know to feign ignorance of certain subjects.
Actually, I was thinking that people had been reading Eric Flint’s 1632. Even the time frame is just about right.
BTW, on the topic of anti-biotics - disease isn’t a fun way to die, but I’m going to stand by my emphasis on germ theory, rather than focusing on anti-biotics. I’m not saying that the introduction of the sulfa drugs, or Chloramphenicol, wouldn’t be nearly miraculous. However, simply giving a reason for people to bath regularly, and clean up, would save more lives than any medication. There are economic reasons and religious ones, as well, to explain why disease was so easily transferred through the population in these times (It’s damned hard to stay clean if you’ve only got one or even two sets of clothes, f’rinstance.), but anything that can interrupt the cycle of infection would be incredibly helpful. The problem is that, at that point in history, all medical authorities (All fields of scholarship, actually.) were still looking back to the theories of the ancients for understanding of how the body worked.
And, alas, germ theory would be a damned hard sell to people of that time: first off, cell theory was still 200 years in the future, IIRC. So you have to explain the cellular structure of life, then explain to people how little, itty, bitty, impossible-to-see, things can hurt an organism vastly larger than them. Don’t forget, the biggest group that was offended by germ theory and cleanliness in Europe in the nineteenth century were the doctors. It’s only going to be worse dealing with sixteenth century attitudes. And getting the damned leeches to give up their bleeding equipment is… going to be challenging.
Which is exactly why teaching them sanitation and germ theory isn’t going to work. That’s a fairly slow process, I think, and unfortunately one where if you put it into practice, the cause and effect relationship is not obvious within a few days/weeks. In other words, it takes a while to build the stuff, and it takes a long time to see that it is actually having a beneficial effect.
A drug or medicine, on the other hand, that you can with some plausibility state you discovered, that has a salubrious effect in a few days or a week, would be much easier to pass off and profit from.
And then your patients die when the leeches add the medication to their existing pratices, unchanged. Say you give someone with, say, typhus, Chloramphenicol, it would help. But not if they’ve been bled with dirty instruments. :rolleyes:
Besides, iffn you wanted easy, why are you going back 500 years? 50-75 is easy.
I’d research what were the earliest successful Conquistador expeditions, the ones that returned to Europe with boatloads of gold and silver, and arrange to be on one or two.
Once I had enough wealth, I’d buy a minor patent of nobility and an estate in an area not due to be overrun by a war.
I think you need a 5-step process:
(1) learn enough to survive. This would include language, certainly. Customs might not be such a big deal if you can arrange to arrive in some center of foreign travel, like Venice or Amsterdam. Not everyone 500 years ago was a super-insular xenophobe who was eager to burn everyone at the stake.
(2) learn some skill which will make you money. Various have been suggested here. Others might include:
-Manufacturing Gun Cotton
-Electroplating
-Modern small boat/sail design
-Modern plow design
-The cotton gin
-The sewing machine
-Telegraphy
(3) Get rich
(4) Use your wealth to first figure out what local ruler is the most intelligent, open minded, and ambitious-but-not-ruthless; then contact this person, and ally yourself with them.
(5) Now that you’re in a position of power, you can start to enforce things like hygiene by fiat without having to explain germ theory to people. Eventually, people will start to recognize good ideas.
The most crucial things, actually, might be (a) where you go, and (b) what leader you hook up with.
Both 1632 and Island in the Sea of Time have been mentioned in this thread, and both are excellent. But in both cases, the time travelling was a (mysterious) accident. I’d enjoy reading a book in which someone has 10 years and $10,000,000,000 to prepare for the travel-back-and-get-rich-and-change-the-world plan.
I think you guys are overestimating the potential of becoming inventors. Yes all the things mentioned so far are great, and in time would change the world. But you have to remember how embryonic the new culture of advancement was that began in the Renaissance. LIfe wasn’t all that much different in 1705 than it was in 1505.
Above all you have to remember just how lowly the rank and status of even a skilled craftsman was compared to even the most minor noble. Nobility was everything! Owning land was everything! If you didn’t have at least the equivalent of the English title Sir (or were in the Church), you just didn’t count. Only nobles were people as far as rights or respect went. The vast laboring class were regarded as two-legged mules. Trade was looked down upon as mere pretentious money grubbing, and it would take a couple of centuries of oceanic traffic before much of anything other than owning large tracts of land was the basis of social respect. Even the richest merchants merely hoped that a large enough dowry for their daughters might catch the eye of someone landed.
About the only measure of success that all the proposed innovations might bring is that someone who was already rich and powerful might decide that your inventions had been useful enough that you deserved the only reward really worth having: land and a title.
I was thinking about this and came up with something along these lines:
“Scrubbing yourself daily with carbolic soap and applying trichlorphenol to wounds is an effective mortification of the flesh and brings the spirit closer to God; the sting of the antiseptic serves as well as the monk’s hair-shirt. But do not mortify yourself excessively in your pride. As Christ has taught us, doing your alms before men or making your fasting public does not please God, for He turns his face away from that which you do to impress your fellows. Adhere to what is set out for you and do not vainly think to improve upon it.”
