That’s because they did not live long enough to develop it. That and certain cancers are becoming a lot more common in places like Thailand these days. Many have blamed the adoption of Western diets, but the fact that people are now living longer seems to have the most bearing. Live long enough and you’re pretty much certain to develop some sort of cancer. I’ve read that as recently as the early 1800s, your average 30-year-old French peasant looked about 70!
Derleth writes:
> You might do better going back to the first century AD and establishing a
> religion with basic sanitation as part of its dogma. Think Missionaria Protectiva
> meets Red Cross. It would superficially fit right in with the restrictions and
> rituals observed by Jews (and any time-travelling Muslims stopping by) but it
> would be based on science and rational thought.
This is probably as close as anyone has come to a complete solution, and yet I suspect that it wouldn’t work. At best, you would be creating a new body of superstitions, even if they were superstitions that happened to work. It’s not likely that they would continue to be obeyed in the form that you originally disseminated them for very long. People would begin messing with the recommendations that you made and changing them in all sorts of ways that seemed more reasonable to them, even though they would be worse for the general health.
Societies are tightly interwoven collections of beliefs. You can’t change a belief here and there in them without affecting all the other beliefs in the society. There’s a good reason that effective modern medicine didn’t really exist in even the most advanced societies of the world until the late nineteenth century. (There existed some scientific study of anatomy and such and there was some rudimentary knowledge of the effect of some drugs, but until the late nineteenth century it didn’t come together as a generally useful, well organized body of knowledge agreed on by its practitioners.) Without a culture that believes that science works and is useful for the general population, people can’t be persuaded to follow the recommendations of modern medicine. Even in the third world today, it’s very hard to fight certain illnesses because there are common misunderstandings of how the body works, how various illnesses work, and how medical solutions work. Without a general knowledge of modern science, many simple modern medical recommendations are too hard to propagate because they sound like silly superstitions to most people.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke
In the Janissaries series, but Poul Anderson (I think…?) a modern team of mercenaries fighting in Angola are transported to a world peppered with human cultures from throughout the world from Roman centurion to middle ages scots/welsh (never could figure out which they’re supposed to be).
In the modern team is a medic, who propogates germ theory in the guise of religion… “Tiny Demons” living on the flesh, that must be washed away with boiled holy water. Seems to have worked out for them.
Heh. Just for interest.
I have often wondered why nobody tried using the carotid holds of judo/jujutsu for surgery. Granted, you have to work fast before the patient suffers brain damage, but surely you can go a long way towards setting a bone or amputations in that time.
Regards,
Shodan
Just send Kevin Trudeau.
I think you could make a big difference in obstetrics, gynaecology and family planning.
->properly applying the rhythm method
->making some workable condoms
->even Dr Bronner’s half a lemon diaphragm would be a possible step up!
Sanitation would help in cases of child-bed fever, and if you managed to get hold of cholorofrm or ether you could do c-sections.
Some obstetric forceps or a Kiwi-type system would be useful, and could be made relatively easily by contemporary craftsmen if you reverse-engineered a design. Even something like a sink plunger would do the job.
Just having a safe, clean delivery would be a start…and if you could get hold of some of that ergot from the rotten grain you might even stop someone dying from a post-partum haemorrhage.
CPR would probably save a life or two, especially newborns who take their time breathing.
Asa woman, I’d probably find it easier to make some changes to obstetric practice, since that was generally the preserve of women anyway.
I don’t have a whole lot to contribute, but I would love to read that story if you ever write it!
Tristan writes:
> Seems to have worked out for them.
Right. In a piece of fiction it worked. I suspect that it would never work in real life (even if time travel somehow existed in real life). Books of the “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” are very entertaining to read, but it’s unlikely that a single person could impose his knowledge on a whole society. They’re essentially wish-fulfillment stories. They’re for people who like to believe that they are smart and generally knowledgeable about present-day society and would so impress other people with their overall wonderfulness that everyone in the society that they were transported to would immediately acknowledge their brilliance. There’s no way that that’s going to happen, even if it were true that they knew enough about modern medicine to give advice to a more primitive society. Hardly anyone has such knowledge in our society in any case, since basically we’re all specialists, even the doctors among us. These sorts of stories are for proponents of the Great Man theory of history, the people who believe that single people can make huge differences in society.
It just occurred to me that a modern physician translated to medieval times might be in extreme danger of being condemned for witchcraft. All of his or her ideas would be so opposed to the received wisdom or the day that they would probably be looked at as bordering on insane.
Trotula of Salerno was a female physician in the Middle Ages.
Oh, I absolutely agree with this; it’s just that a physician, even one with the backing of authority such as it existed, would have relatively little control over public sanitation. As it happens, I’m was re-reading The Great Hunger: Ireland: 1845-1849 and in particular the description of the pandemics (typhus, relapsing fever, cholera) which plagued the inhabitants of Ireland following the disastrous harvests of 1845-46 caused by the blight of Phytophthora infestans. Although the infectious organisms existed in Ireland long before and causes regular isolated outbreaks of infection and pestilence, the great poverty that resulted in the potato blight (and the lack of English authorities to do anything effectual to support the Irish population while continuing to export meat and grain) necessitated a sharp decline in standards of personal sanitation and resistance to infection. This, combined with non-existent public sanitation, migrancy which communicated illnesses across long distances, and a lack of prompt attention to quarantining the sick and disposal of the dead resulted in pandemics of devastating proportions, killing off somewhere between 10% and 15% of the population of that island between 1946 and 1951.
While pathogenic theory was yet to be accepted by the medical practice at large (this being well before Pasteur’s famous experiments with fermentation, and acceptance of germ theory following by several decades) knowledgeable physicians were aware of the correlation between sanitation and health. A large number of physicians and nurses arrived in Ireland to help treat the sick (many of whom themselves succumbed to illness) but for those living in crude mud huts with manure piled at the doorway, sick and dying relatives strewn across the floor, and no clean water sources to be had, there was little that could be done immediately in terms of improving sanitation. It’d would expect conditions to be about the same if not worse in medieval Europe where plagues would sweep across the land every few years killing 10% or more until population densities were low enough that effective transmission of the agent was no longer possible.
Stranger
If the time-travelling doctor helped save the local king, duke or archbishop, or that guy’s beloved wife/eldest son/significant other, he might become court physician and have the top dude’s backing to do all kinds of stuff, without being considered a warlock. Having the local TPTB at your back could be very empowering.
Until the Palace Intrigue* decided that you interfered in the Godly Plan to install them in the throne. The King would be deposed and you would be disposed of soon after.
*(Available in Wilhelmina, Hirohito, or the Red Nicky Bonus Pack.)
Jerry Pournelle I believe.
While mercury compounds were mentioned earlier as a beneficial thing, stopping all of the “cures” using mercury for everything from bladder stones to pneumonia would be helpful. In fact, any sort of industrial hygiene would help.
In the 13th century a rich private individual could set himself up his own hospice, staff it and pretty much have free rein as long as he didnt act too ‘heretical’.
Many nunneries operated hospices where the staff were all nuns. Females couold manage there, and be reasonably safe if they followed the rules.
Many monastaries also operated hospices. Men could be safe there if they could follow the rules.
Many of the religious order’s hospices were very sophisticated pharmaceutically as the orders were primarily responsible for salvaging the roman, greek and some islamic texts on health, such as “Tacitum Sanitas” A Medieval Health Handbook (George Brazillier Press) goes over medical uses for plants, some anatomical information, dietary information and how to live according to the humeric theory. Keep in mind they were dealing with some 1500 years of practical experimentation with herbs and did discover the uses of willow bark, foxglove, opium, slipppery elm, calendula and almost everything we see now in ‘herbal health preparations’. There is a very effective linement used in medievalists groups jokingly known as ‘bruise juice’ that is a preparation of arnica, black willow, witch hazel and comfrey [recipe should be in the herbs use thread, do an in page search of http://www.florilegium.org/] that works, and will reduce a bruise fantastically fast.
Why yes, I did actually happen to be into research herbalism and a medieval recreationist. Other than a small language barrier, I could fit in as a practical nurse in a nun’s hospice. I know how to fake being catholic, and even know the responses to the catholic basic mass=)
Urban Myth.
“trenchmouth” actually refers to a disease common in the trenches of World War One.
<nitpick>
The word “enormity” does not mean “extremely large.” It implies something monstrous or outrageous, as in “the enormity of the crime.”
</nitpick>