In Great Britain I would imagine that the life expectancy of the average middle class person is not too different from that of the royal family. I assume that the Queen has similar access to health care facilities, although I also assume there are helicopters and round-the-clock medical staff available just in case, but there are no treatments she can receive that anyone else in Britain couldn’t receive.
I don’t think that was the case a few hundred years ago, say during Elizabethan times. In those days I think doctors, such as they were, would focus their attention on those who could afford to pay, such as the rich and the royals. I also think that the medical care they provided wasn’t that great compared to someone who got little or no care. This was, after all, before germ theory was discovered.
So did the royal family during the Elizabethan period have a longer life expectancy than the average middle class tradesman? The royals at that time presumably had better sanitation and higher quality (and a greater variety) of food, which should have helped them live longer…
The problem is, of course that (a) doctors didn’t know squat and (b) doctors did more harm than good quite often.
If the problem was nutrition, obviously the richer class is more likely to avoid malnutrition and starvation derived problems. Ditto for environmental issues like staying warm, and avoiding overwork or dehydration.
It’s a running joke that the medical establishment ignored the one doctor’s observation for example, that George III’s blue urine was related to his dementia episodes, in the movie it shows the others more concerned with examining his stool.
Typically, one medical theory much in vogue was concerning leeching, using leeches or bleeding the victim/patient to get rid of “bad blood”. Needless to say, this wasn’t a great strategy for someone already weakened by disease, so over-doctoring had its downside.
They could do basic surgery for some things (Neal Stephenson’s trilogy relates surgery for kidney stones, IIRC) but without proper disinfectant, that too could be more negative than positive. Typical problems - heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, hemophilia, smallpox and other infections - there was not much doctors knew how to treat effectively.
WTF are you talking about? “Did’nt know squat”? That’s silly. Yes, compared to today, there ability to treat is poor, but then doctors in the 1950’s also had poor ability compared to today.
Royalty, had access to medical care and that’s been one constant, If you have access to medical care, then you live longer. Sure the doctors can do little for your diabetics and athercolosis, but then, they could do a good job in repairing broken bones, performing cataract surgery, removing cancerous tumours, etc, things which would be something the ordinary run of the mill merchant could only dream about.
These days, Royalty still has access to the very best care available on the planet. Moreoever they have doctors present at all times and they are checked up regularly, meaning that potentially serious illnesses can be caught early.Your ordinary Elizabeth only goes to the doctors when she starts displaying serious symptoms of cancer, but in the case of Elizabeth the Queen Mother, was caught in a regular checkup and she lived for 4 decades afterwards.
This article has a detailed analysis of the various statistics. Basically, royal life expectancy in the late sixteenth century seems to have been better than that of Londoners but was probably worse than that of the population as a whole. But in later centuries royal life expectancy improved more rapidly. The article speculates on how much this was due to improved medical knowledge.
[QUOTE=AK84;18028483
These days, Royalty still has access to the very best care available on the planet. Moreover they have doctors present at all times and they are checked up regularly, meaning that potentially serious illnesses can be caught early.Your ordinary Elizabeth only goes to the doctors when she starts displaying serious symptoms of cancer, but in the case of Elizabeth the Queen Mother, was caught in a regular checkup and she lived for 4 decades afterwards.[/QUOTE]
Your ordinary Elizabeth gets regular, free checkups too, although many don’t take advantage of them.
I think longevity is as much to do with genes as with medical care and diet. Centuries ago, the upper crust suffered from diseases related to excessive eating, obesity, diabetes, heart disease etc. The poor suffered from diseases related to a poor diet and hard physical work; rickets, malnutrition, arthritis etc.
Women of all classes would likely have to survive a dozen or more pregnancies.
That makes sense given the overcrowding of cities such as London, and the related sanitation, air pollution and disease spreading issues, but I would have thought the royals would have been able to avoid that by not living among the masses. I think many had multiple residences, some out in the country, that would keep them away from the polluted cities at least some of the time.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the inbreeding jibe (I know it’s said in lighthearted jest) is inaccurate when thrown at the British monarchy, although the Spanish Habsburgs were notorious for it. Maybe this is better for a separate thread, but I think the blood of the British monarchy was about as mixed as any other family? Kinda…
Nope. It’s not silly. Yes, medical science has improved since 1950s, but if you go back a 100 years from that a lot of medical practice was actively harmful, and if you go back another 100 years medical treatment was more likely to be harmful than not.
One of the reasons homeopathy gained so much ground in the early 19th century was that it was better to get no treatment than harmful treatment, and what regular doctors offered was harmful.
Henry the VIII suffered obesity and gout thanks to the rich diet. I’ve read speculation that his fashionable stockings cut off blood to his legs. His health was a mess
Gout seems to be a problem for a lot of the privileged classes. Too rich of a diet.
It seems in Henry’s case, a peasant eating simple (possibly infrequent) meals was better off. His doctor’s treatment may have done more harm than good.
Yes, basic first aid procedures, some people (some of them educated) could perform. Surgery was always hit and miss without sterilization procedures, and of course without anesthetic.
Read the story of Semmelweis ( Ignaz Semmelweis - Wikipedia ) who was hounded out of his practice and eventually to suicide because he dared to suggest doctors wash their hands after handling dead bodies before touching women in childbirth. one year the death from puerperal fever in the doctors clinic hit 15% (typically, 10%) and was consistently about double that of midwives in the other clinic. But suggest that doctors might have filthy hands like lower class workmen? Oh, no, totally unacceptable.
Yes, I was thinking about lifestyle excesses as being a hazard of earlier royals but it’s less to do with doctors; and now that they are “public figures” much like Hollywood “royalty”, they benefit from better lifestyle management than the good old days of gout and morbid obesity. (Although there’s been plenty of speculation of the cause of Henry VIII’s ulcerated leg…) I suspect the more prominent royals today probably have personal trainers, medical diet supervision, scheduled exercise, etc. - all the trappings of a rich lifestyle.
We can quote all the examples of how doctors knew things and could do things that the average laymen did not even back 1000 years ago, but there are equally examples of incredibly misguided and dangerous treatments. the basic fact remains, for most diseases and conditions, there were almost no effective treatments before modern medicine. There were even fewer effective treatments promoted by the physicians of the time, and plenty of damaging treatments.
Repeat after me: **correlation is not causation. **
Rich people have always been able to afford access to the best medical care at the time, sure. And rich people have always been able to afford good food, well-heated living quarters, and have not had to engage in occupations that prematurely wore their bodies down.
Which, as the article points out, is probably one reason why they did better than Londoners - members of the Royal Family divided their time between London and the country, so at the start of the period their statistics fall somewhere between those for the inhabitants of either.
But there is one other factor that the article doesn’t mention. Politically smart rulers didn’t shut themselves away from their subjects. Even if they were mostly meeting members of the elite, they were probably meeting more people than average. Having your hand kissed numerous times a day doesn’t seem especially hygienic by modern standards. Even modern politicians sometimes find that they can pick up germs from shaking hands with too many voters. Also let’s not forget that some Tudor and Stuart monarchs made a point of coming into physical contact with large numbers of their poorest subjects on a regular basis.
plus, it’s not like their subjects were free of inbreeding. when everyone lives their lives in the same village, without much mobility, there will b marriages among closely related folks.
That’s caricatural. If you actually read his story, you’ll note that the main reason he was disbelieved was precisely that he had no explanation to provide for this alleged phenomenon, hence it looked like woo to other doctors : “cadaverous vapours” mysteriously going from disected cadavers to women giving birth through normally clean (nothing observable) hands.
Also, there was even in ancient time a significant knowledge of the property of plants. An example I recently read about, regarding the suspicious death of a French royal mistress. They were trying to determine if mercury poisoning had played a role in her demise. But they found traces of a specific specie of fern in her intestines, and that she had worms. They so could establish the mercury was treatment : the fern was used for massive infestation because it paralyzed the worms, who could then be “flushed out” by a laxative including mercury. Presumably the doctors of the time didn’t know how the fern acted, but they knew that it could be used to get rid of these parasites. I find such specific completely empirical knowledge quite impressive, and presumably they could use many plants in a similar way with actual beneficial effects.
Samuel Pepys had a bladder stone removed in 1658, which may ultimately have contributed to his death - a postmortem found that his old surgical incision had reopened and that gangrene had set in throughout his bladder and the surrounding tissue.
