When traveling, especially to less developed places, visitors are at risk of developing intestinal distress accounting to less sanitary hygiene practices or just unique bacteria. “Montezuma’s revenge” is a term for tourists who get sick drinking Mexican water, for example, and googling leads me to the term “traveler’s diarrhea”.
Would time traveler’s have the same risk? I mean, if you go back 500 years, and even if you are in a place that is kept clean, aren’t you pretty much guaranteed to be ingesting some bacteria foreign to your intestine? Isn’t that a recipe for disaster?
It’s not that anything would be wrong with the food of, say, a Boston tavern in 1776, but is it true that the meal I buy probably wouldn’t sit well, at the least? Is the beer at least safe?
(I’m, of course, no scientist, so perhaps this is incorrect?)
If I’m correct to be worried about getting the shits, how far back should my concern extend? Pie from a diner in the 1940’s is gonna be okay, right?
And what about my medieval peasant friend - if I bring him with me to get a Big Mac, he’s gonna be hella sick later, isn’t he?
(You’re thoughts are similar to mine. Beer was traditionally safe. I just hope that there isn’t something in the centuries old hops or barley that my modern gut flora tries to reject).
That isn’t going to help. Anything you eat or eat with will have had recent contact with the local water, and all it takes is one little patch of bacteria to lay you low. That fork may have been washed enough to sterilize it, but it was then rinsed in contaminated water. Any food that had a water component is compromised, unless it underwent complete boiling.
I once did an extended weekend sailing in Ensenada living on beer and street tacos. No problems at all. On the way home we stopped at Rosarita Beach for breakfast. Fresh caught fish, bacon, eggs, Bloody Marys…
I think a time traveler might have the same issues.
Today, traveling to some places is going back in time in many ways. Or forward depending on start and finish locations. We have economic / social / political time travel. Of course a time traveler might be able to pre medicate. Take along the appropriate medications to help on site.
Definitely a concern. Get all the vaccinations up to date, including more obscure ones. Appendectomy, full dental fix. Etc…
Good question.
Keep in mind that humans living today get sick from the food they eat and the water they drink every day, so I would be surprised if you didn’t get sick from the food and water served to you 500 years ago.
They didn’t know anything about germ theory back then. Alcohol is probably going to be okay, as mentioned already.
To get around this, just boil water and use boiled water for everything you do, including bathing, and avoid any non-boiled water whenever possible. Cow’s milk might be okay, assume the cow wasn’t exposed to unsanitary water.
Depending upon how far back you travel, illness from food might be the least of your concerns. There are pathogen-borne illnesses that have become less severe over time, or have pretty much died out - and going back you’ll be getting hit with the really nasty versions.
You might be able to be inoculated against some varieties, but I don’t know if that would help you if you happen to come up against something like the 1918 influenza.
Stick with beer (or the hard stuff) and fruit you peel yourself.
Veggies wouldn’t be safe. You don’t know who is using night soil.
Even if you could boil your water, it won’t kill off some really nasty bugs. In that little emergency packet you’ll end up taking, add some iodine purification tablets.
Let’s say my friend is about 25. He’s lived his life as a peasant farmer. The sweetest thing he’s eaten is an apple (maybe honey? I don’t know). He’s used salt to preserve meat, but it’s a commodity.
I bring him to McD’s and we get a #1 - the Big Mac, fries and a coke. That’s more salt and sugar than he’s probably had in a year.
Would it bother him? Would it be a shock to his system? Or would it just ruin the taste of gruel forever after?
Yeah, there must be pathogens that one’s ancestors developed immunities against which have faded by the time of our generation.
I might be screwed without bringing a bunch of antibiotics and other medicine with me. Even then, I can see how time travelers would learn to expect feeling a little under the weather the first few weeks they enter a new era.
This is true, but they did know, by observation, that you could get sick from food and what sorts of foods and hygeine failures in preparation were likely to cause it, and they took precautions to avoid it. One of THE main functions of a medieval city government was inspecting food offered for sale and regulating stuff like how animals were slaughtered, how the meat was handled afterward, and how long it could be sitting around before you sold it. (And no, people in that era definitely didn’t use spices to cover up the taste of spoiled meat; if you could afford spices, you could, and did, afford good-quality meat. They used spices because they liked them, and as a way of showing off their wealth.) It’s true that eating fresh, raw vegetables would be a bad idea, but that’s exactly why you probably wouldn’t be served any; most vegetable recipes involve boiling or at least blanching the vegetables, including ones we’d normally eat raw today. People developed food handling practices that worked, even if they didn’t know precisely why they worked.
Generally, I think you’d be OK if you stuck to eating establishments that were popular with the locals and avoided drinking the water, especially in urban areas (even if the locals are drinking it, which they absolutely did do). I’d be a lot more worried about getting plague, smallpox, or something else non-food-borne in nature.
And if I get invited to a feast for King Henry VIII, or Louis XIV, what am I supposed to do? Tell them I already ate before I got there?
And it’s not like you can live on beer and peelable fruit. If I plan on staying a few weeks, I’m going to need some food. I doubt I’ll have enough room in the time machine for a bunch of groceries; I mean, some dried fruit and nuts, a couple of protein bars, sure, but at some point I’m going to want a nice dinner.
Carry a vegetable peeler with you and you’re golden. Enables you to peel vegetables before eating or cooking, discarding possible contaminated areas. Want to eat out? Find a tavern that serves ale and stew. Bring your own spoon.
Diamonds might not be a great choice. Depends on the time period. Before the late 1600/1700s, nobody knew how to facet gemstones. That made the big difference in appearance, demand and price. Definitely silver rather than gold. Silver in “honest.” Gold will get you killed and robbed.