The T-dap will take care of diphtheria, and there is currently no dependable vaccine for TB, BCG notwithstanding.
I agree 100%. I grew up in a very small town on the Louisiana/Texas border. It has a classic main street that is about 500 yards long with buildings on both sides. The kicker for me is that our family owned a hardware/general store that was completed in 1900 along with most other buildings on the street. We still owned it until I was ten years old and it never had true renovations and we still sold the same categories of things my great-grandparents did back then. We even had many things like shelving and fixtures still in use. I have seen it in many old pictures.
My great-grandparents had this monstrous 6000 square foot house where my grandfather and his siblings grew up. Not only did I know the house personally, my great-grandmother still lived there when I a kid. We used to visit her frequently. She was about 18 in 1900.
If I went back to my hometown, not only would I already know our store, but most other buildings on main-street and I would already know my great-grandmother and probably a number of other people as well. I have the same first and last name as my great-grandfather. I could just show him my drivers license. He wouldn’t know exactly what it was but it should be easy to explain.
I may have to try time-travelling back there tomorrow. It should be a hoot.
Remember to take along a list of horse racing winners.
-Joe
Speaking as someone who has had really horrible allergies his whole life, things haven’t changed much… I first started receiving allergy shots in 1976 for about 5 years… and just started them again this year… not much change there.
And while the pharmaceutical companies keep telling me their allergy meds are better than ever, Actifed still works for me when necessary… and it was invented in the 50’s…
But glad to hear your surgery and meds are working!
Seek out Edison, annoy him by showing off how clever you are. “You might wanna try some Tungsten in there, Ed.”
What about profanity?
In this day and age, casual usages of “damn” or “shit” don’t generally raise much consternation (obviously, this depends on your peer group). Was such language acceptable then, or would it be horribly shocking to mutter?
And was it the same profanity? Would choice words like “fuck” still be understood 108 years ago? Were there some words they used as epithets that we wouldn’t get today?
You would have to resist the urge to bring any money, coins or bills, with you on your trip (unless you can find pre-1900 currency on ebay).
If you could find daily stock tickers from 1900 or old horse racing/baseball scores, you could work for a few days as a laborer, and then turn a few bucks into thousands pretty quickly, as long as you kept using different bookies 
Women would have trouble with their clothing. Going from little bras, shirts and slacks to full corsets and long dresses would be hell for me.
And oh yeah, I couldn’t say “hell” or “damn.”
The creators of Deadwood ran into this problem. The show is set in the 1870s. Historically accurate profanity would sound either too mild or too weird for modern audiences. Blasphemy was the most shocking thing one could say back then and I doubt things would’ve changed much in 30 years.
Well, “fuck” is a lot older than 108 years. But what you might run into is the phenomenon of people brought up in polite society without ever having been exposed to such words, and who wouldn’t understand them because they hadn’t ever heard them before. You’d be understood down by the docks, but not necessarily in a lady’s drawing room.
From post #9,
Take a rotary dial phone into a school today and see how strange it is.
One would go bonkers looking at all the precious antiques!
I would get put in a sanitarium for all the drool 
I would love to do one of those shows but they would not tke me for several reasons. I am not photogenic, I am handicapped and I am too accomplished as a medieval recreationist to fall into the pitfalls the idiotic family did in 1900 house.
The damn fool worked too hard because she refused to work the maid of all work hard enough. The kids barely had any chores and any they did have they did half arsed.
-it was a Rod Serling story-basically a rich old masells his soul to the devil, in order to return to his hometown in 1900. He figures he’ll do much better in life-because he knows:
-about a massive oil deposit under some worthess land
-he will marry the prettiest girl in town
-he will tell the town blacksmith how to build an automobile self-starter (and become a jillionaire)
Only things go considerably awry!
The oil is under 1000 feet of swamp-undrillable in 1900!
the girl is a dog.
The blacksmith has no idea what the guy is babbling about.
And Satan double-crosses him-he is still and old man in a young body. :eek:
That episode is actually, “Of Late I Think of Cliffordsville”. “A Stop at Willowby” was a different story.
Housemaid, washerwoman, seamstress, nurse, factory worker, cook …
You might want to read a thriller entitled, “The Alienist,” by Caleb Carr.
As I remember, the author really captured turn-of-the-century NYC.
Seriously? Blasphemy was the most shocking thing? What the hell did they use to say a simple sentence like, “that new evolution thing is blasphemy.”
I have not read all this thread, but as I am inordinately fond of time-travel stories, it sparked me thinking what sort of skills a voyager to 1900 would be able to use.
A concert pianist would be able to make a good living and use his general knowledge to steer mankind from the horror of leisure suits.
I think the post means saying things like “goddam it” or “ferkristsake” were considered worse than “damn” or “hell.” Never say “Goddam you to hell.”
7th Day Adventists, too, and the related Kellogg bunch in Battle Creek - see the movie “Road to Wellville”.
Also of course, some Hindu and Buddhist sects.