I asked about this in the thread about when people would have died if they’d lived in the days before modern medicine, but I think it went unanswered.
A lot of people mentioned that things like UTIs that could have (or did) turned into kidney infections might have carried them off. But what did people do before they could just take a round of Cipro or Bactrim? Sometimes I’ve had good luck with just taking a lot of cranberry juice/water/vitamin C when the symptoms are very early on, but if you’ve got a full blown one, you pretty much just need anti bios. Annoying today, but usually not deadly once diagnosed. What did you do back then?
IANAMD, but in the past, with a minor UTI, the doctor told me to drink up (water, of course) instead of giving me antibiotics. I’m not sure, but I would guess it was to flush out the system, so to speak. As for the pain, I just feel sorry for our poor ancestors.
I had one urinary tract infection and if I never have another I wll be very happy. At the time I didn’t have insurance so I decided to see how bad it would get. Four days later, after peeing 4 times in a hour with very little pee and too much pain, I just said “That’s it. I’m not going again until I’m peeing my pants.” I then proceeded to drink about a half gallon of iced tea.
7 hours later I peed and everything was fine. Problem solved and it never came back.
UTIs aren’t always very symptomatic. I had one once while pregnant and the only reason I found out I had it was through the regular pee tests at the midwife’s office. We let it go for a while to see if it would clear up on it’s own, but after a couple of weeks, when i was getting close to my due date, the midwife decided antibiotics were in order.
I’ve only had one other UTI diagnosed. My then boyfriend called the doctor one morning when my back was killing me, I had a fever, and my pee was a lovely shade of coral. I never had any of the classic UTI symptoms, though, so I had no idea what was wrong with me.
I am that way, totally asymptomatic until my back goes from the normal level of chronic pain to HOLY FUCK WHO JUST HIT ME WITH A BASEBALL BAT type pain in the area over the kidneys. At about that time it dawns on me that I need to get to a doctor because Im now tossing up food I ate a month previously [with whole corn, i never eat corn where does it come from:confused:] and look like a junkie in withdrawl. My doc will randomly piss test me for UTIs when I come in, and he has actually caught them before they got out of hand.
Pepy’s wife is now thought to have suffered from Bartholin’s Cyst - easily curable now with antibiotics but something that just had to be endured and probably made sex painful for her. Pepys himself suffered from kidney stones, and eventually opted for a dangerous (and more-or-less successful) operation to remove them - you had to be in great pain or very desperate to risk that.
I found this out actually, when I got one and was all freaked out last year. Well, I found out that some will pass–I didn’t realize that so many did. I went to the doctor and got tested but in the days before I could get an appointment, I did what I read you’re supposed to do (lots of water, cranberry juice, vitamin C) and peed a LOT. By the time I had the appointment, I was still peeing so much from all the fluids, so I assumed I still had something. But my tests came back negative, so I guess I just got rid of it. And now usually when I get symptoms, I just try to get a lot of fluids and it goes away.
Uh, what about stinging nettle? It’s a very old therapeutic plant, and tea from it has been recommended for a long time for kidney or bladder troubles because it has ingredients that force you to pee more (don’t know the english medical term for it).
