History thread, I have a question. I just recently went through my first experience with antibiotics. How did people through the ages deal with infections. Besides dying, anyway.
As far as I know...
Tough it out and pray; amputation; or death: depending on severity.
History thread, I have a question. I just recently went through my first experience with antibiotics. How did people through the ages deal with infections. Besides dying, anyway.
History thread, I have a question. I just recently went through my first experience with antibiotics. How did people through the ages deal with infections. Besides dying, anyway.
To prevent infection from getting a hold:
Sterilizing agents (like silver, bromide and iodine). Their use during the American civil war (once there was an established military medical corps) probably saved thousands of lives and prevented the war from becoming an even bigger massacre than it was.
To clean out an infected wound:
Maggots. Maggots are pretty effective when it comes to eating infected and necrotic tissue.
To combat bacterial diseases:
Generally really really toxic shit with questionable effect (like Mercury) or completely useless treatements (like bloodletting).
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Also, as previously mentioned, amputation.
Generally they had to perform a primary amputation (to take off the limb) and then a secondary amputation if/when the infection became too bad in the first amputation.
Sometimes multiple secondary amputations.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
At least some roman surgeons used honey and/or boiled wine on wounds. They were also pretty sophisticated about keeping the wound sealed off from exposure to the air.
But of course in battlefield conditions tender loving care is spread pretty thin. Like there were certainly plenty of amputations during the civil war where in other circumstances they would have tried to save the limb, but in that circumstance you just gotta cut and go.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
roman medicine was fairly advanced, at least compared to what came immediately after the fall of the empire; they had decent-if-rudimentary surgical tools, (probably) understood the importance of sterization, and possessed at least a basic understanding of what is today known as germ theory. Surgeons always used clean running water, and situated hospitals such that they were upstream from latrines and other waste. Like basically every other time in history, most of their advances grew out of military need.
if you caught some sort of serious infection you were still fucked though, and amputation was still common. In fairness to them though serious infections fucked people up essentially until the invention of modern antibiotics
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle.
A common cause of modern styes is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA) is resistant to many current antibiotics. Staph and MRSA infections are responsible for a variety of severe and chronic infections, including wound infections, sepsis and pneumonia.
Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.
In our study, this recipe turned out to be a potent antistaphylococcal agent, which repeatedly killed established S. aureus biofilms – a sticky matrix of bacteria adhered to a surface – in an in vitro infection model. It also killed MRSA in mouse chronic wound models.
I mean Medieval Medicine wasn't -always- totally bunk.
In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle.
A common cause of modern styes is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA) is resistant to many current antibiotics. Staph and MRSA infections are responsible for a variety of severe and chronic infections, including wound infections, sepsis and pneumonia.
Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.
In our study, this recipe turned out to be a potent antistaphylococcal agent, which repeatedly killed established S. aureus biofilms – a sticky matrix of bacteria adhered to a surface – in an in vitro infection model. It also killed MRSA in mouse chronic wound models.
I mean Medieval Medicine wasn't -always- totally bunk.
In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle.
A common cause of modern styes is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA) is resistant to many current antibiotics. Staph and MRSA infections are responsible for a variety of severe and chronic infections, including wound infections, sepsis and pneumonia.
Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.
In our study, this recipe turned out to be a potent antistaphylococcal agent, which repeatedly killed established S. aureus biofilms – a sticky matrix of bacteria adhered to a surface – in an in vitro infection model. It also killed MRSA in mouse chronic wound models.
I mean Medieval Medicine wasn't -always- totally bunk.
More of a stopped clock thing, to a degree.
Eh, yes and no. The Medieval ages get a bad rap for being "unenlightened" when that isn't nearly the case. Just historical bias from Renaissance scholars who were fans of Rome.
In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle.
A common cause of modern styes is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA) is resistant to many current antibiotics. Staph and MRSA infections are responsible for a variety of severe and chronic infections, including wound infections, sepsis and pneumonia.
Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.
In our study, this recipe turned out to be a potent antistaphylococcal agent, which repeatedly killed established S. aureus biofilms – a sticky matrix of bacteria adhered to a surface – in an in vitro infection model. It also killed MRSA in mouse chronic wound models.
I mean Medieval Medicine wasn't -always- totally bunk.
More of a stopped clock thing, to a degree.
Eh, yes and no. The Medieval ages get a bad rap for being "unenlightened" when that isn't nearly the case. Just historical bias from Renaissance scholars who were fans of Rome.
Indeed. It's built into the very language they (and we still) use to describe these periods. Everything after Rome was the "Dark Ages", until their Roman fandom started up which was a "Renaissance".
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
also I feel like I should point out the fact that this stuff killing fucking MRSA is amazing
like MRSA is what you find in the dictionary if you look up antibiotic resistant bacteria
In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle.
A common cause of modern styes is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA) is resistant to many current antibiotics. Staph and MRSA infections are responsible for a variety of severe and chronic infections, including wound infections, sepsis and pneumonia.
Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.
In our study, this recipe turned out to be a potent antistaphylococcal agent, which repeatedly killed established S. aureus biofilms – a sticky matrix of bacteria adhered to a surface – in an in vitro infection model. It also killed MRSA in mouse chronic wound models.
I mean Medieval Medicine wasn't -always- totally bunk.
More of a stopped clock thing, to a degree.
Eh, yes and no. The Medieval ages get a bad rap for being "unenlightened" when that isn't nearly the case. Just historical bias from Renaissance scholars who were fans of Rome.
Imperaboos
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
At least some roman surgeons used honey and/or boiled wine on wounds. They were also pretty sophisticated about keeping the wound sealed off from exposure to the air.
I was going to mention the honey thing if no one else did. Honey doesn't spoil because it has a low moisture content and is acidic, so bacteria and other organisms can't grow in it. Bees after all don't have refrigeration so they needed to evolve other tricks to be able to store honey long term. Romans and many others realized this and smeared honey on wounds, hoping that the same lack of spoilage would occur, and it does work. There are modern experiments being done now to try to figure out how effective it is and when and how it can best be used. So good on them for figuring it out.
In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle.
A common cause of modern styes is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA) is resistant to many current antibiotics. Staph and MRSA infections are responsible for a variety of severe and chronic infections, including wound infections, sepsis and pneumonia.
Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.
In our study, this recipe turned out to be a potent antistaphylococcal agent, which repeatedly killed established S. aureus biofilms – a sticky matrix of bacteria adhered to a surface – in an in vitro infection model. It also killed MRSA in mouse chronic wound models.
I mean Medieval Medicine wasn't -always- totally bunk.
More of a stopped clock thing, to a degree.
Eh, yes and no. The Medieval ages get a bad rap for being "unenlightened" when that isn't nearly the case. Just historical bias from Renaissance scholars who were fans of Rome.
Imperaboos
Grekaboos
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle.
A common cause of modern styes is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA) is resistant to many current antibiotics. Staph and MRSA infections are responsible for a variety of severe and chronic infections, including wound infections, sepsis and pneumonia.
Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.
In our study, this recipe turned out to be a potent antistaphylococcal agent, which repeatedly killed established S. aureus biofilms – a sticky matrix of bacteria adhered to a surface – in an in vitro infection model. It also killed MRSA in mouse chronic wound models.
I mean Medieval Medicine wasn't -always- totally bunk.
More of a stopped clock thing, to a degree.
Hardly. I'm reminded of a comment (in a discussion about the flat-earth-immagonnamakearokkit!-guy I think) about how 'science wasn't invented until the 1800s.' People of previous ages weren't stupid, just because they were working with more limited knowledge and basic tools. People were just as invested in figuring out how things worked, how to replicate effects, and how to apply them as we are. It's easy to go, 'oh-ho-ho, bloodletting, those savages,' and ignore the things that actually worked.
In 2015, our team published a pilot study on a 1,000-year old recipe called Bald’s eyesalve from “Bald’s Leechbook,” an Old English medical text. The eyesalve was to be used against a “wen,” which may be translated as a sty, or an infection of the eyelash follicle.
A common cause of modern styes is the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (or MRSA) is resistant to many current antibiotics. Staph and MRSA infections are responsible for a variety of severe and chronic infections, including wound infections, sepsis and pneumonia.
Bald’s eyesalve contains wine, garlic, an Allium species (such as leek or onion) and oxgall. The recipe states that, after the ingredients have been mixed together, they must stand in a brass vessel for nine nights before use.
In our study, this recipe turned out to be a potent antistaphylococcal agent, which repeatedly killed established S. aureus biofilms – a sticky matrix of bacteria adhered to a surface – in an in vitro infection model. It also killed MRSA in mouse chronic wound models.
I mean Medieval Medicine wasn't -always- totally bunk.
More of a stopped clock thing, to a degree.
Hardly. I'm reminded of a comment (in a discussion about the flat-earth-immagonnamakearokkit!-guy I think) about how 'science wasn't invented until the 1800s.' People of previous ages weren't stupid, just because they were working with more limited knowledge and basic tools. People were just as invested in figuring out how things worked, how to replicate effects, and how to apply them as we are. It's easy to go, 'oh-ho-ho, bloodletting, those savages,' and ignore the things that actually worked.
The word "science" wasn't invented until the late 1800s. That doesn't mean "science" wasn't invented. There were scientists before then of course, they were called "natural philosophers", and before then just "philosophers".
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
And a lot of times, their beliefs in bad medicine were founded in scientific, but imperfect, observation. For example, bloodletting lowers the blood pressure and can have a sedative effect, both things that would make a patient seem more comfortable or feeling better in a wide range of illnesses while simultaneously weakening their ability to fight the disease. With high mortality rates from most every disease common, the signs of alleviating illness would not necessarily correlate well to bloodletting causing people more harm rather than less before higher technology observational tools.
There are a few conditions for which bloodletting is actually effective, which doesn’t help things.
Over generalization is the source of a lot of misbelief and quackery, like homeopathy (nightshade kills in large doses but helps in small ones, therefore a really small dose will be super effective, right?)
We see the oldest examples of seriously applied scientific method among Islamic scholars in the 10th and 11th century. IMHO the first people we can seriously apply the title "Scientist" to instead of natural philosopher are people like Alhazen, avicenna and Al-biruni.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
We see the oldest examples of seriously applied scientific method among Islamic scholars in the 10th and 11th century. IMHO the first people we can seriously apply the title "Scientist" to instead of natural philosopher are people like Alhazen, avicenna and Al-biruni.
Yeah the early and middle "dark ages" were golden ages of the Islamic world.
Lot of our history is built on earlier sources, and lot of those earlier sources were crap.
ie. dark ages.
It's getting better over time, as more and more stuff gets examined again, or contrasted to newer archeological evidence.
also I feel like I should point out the fact that this stuff killing fucking MRSA is amazing
like MRSA is what you find in the dictionary if you look up antibiotic resistant bacteria
MRSA isn't particularly hardy, it's just picked up a bunch of genes that render it resistant to a range of different chemicals produced by soil yeasts in order to get some breathing room from competitive dirt bacteria that we've since exposed trillions of bacteria to.
Expose those same bacteria to alcohol and a couple of completely new chemicals developed to prevent large creatures from eating onion-family plants and now we're taking multiple roots of attack that would take a very lucky bacteria to have the mutations needed to survive all three.
Don't the Dark Ages specifically refer to Europe? In the way nobody here talks about life in the states during the Edwardian or Elizabethan eras...? Pretty sure even the Victorian era usually just refers to places in the Empire.
Don't the Dark Ages specifically refer to Europe? In the way nobody here talks about life in the states during the Edwardian or Elizabethan eras...? Pretty sure even the Victorian era usually just refers to places in the Empire.
In historical terminology, a dark age is simply an era where comparatively fewer written primary historical accounts exist compared to what came previously. That our ability to view history directly in that era has "gone dark" as it were. But, yes, for most historical eras, they are considered locally and are primarily just short-hand ways of referencing a given time period and place.
Blarghy on
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The dark ages thing is also a disgustingly Euro centric take on the world
Oh, Rome has fallen, boo hoo
There's an entire planet of awesome people
I mean to be fair the Han dynasty also fell around this point and shit sucked in China for a good long while, but it wasn't nearly the blow that Rome falling was to certain areas in Europe.
Which should be noted. On the frontiers of the Roman Empire, when Rome did start to decay, it fucking sucked. It really was a "dark age" for those people because Rome was basically the only thing protecting them from the hordes of nomadic peoples coming in from the east.
The dark ages thing is also a disgustingly Euro centric take on the world
Oh, Rome has fallen, boo hoo
There's an entire planet of awesome people
I mean to be fair the Han dynasty also fell around this point and shit sucked in China for a good long while, but it wasn't nearly the blow that Rome falling was to certain areas in Europe.
Which should be noted. On the frontiers of the Roman Empire, when Rome did start to decay, it fucking sucked. It really was a "dark age" for those people because Rome was basically the only thing protecting them from the hordes of nomadic peoples coming in from the east.
I've always wondered where exactly hordes of nomadic peoples come from. There's just been so many of them, you'd think they'd have run out of areas to have started from. Do they just leave gaps in territory behind that future hordes settle into?
The dark ages thing is also a disgustingly Euro centric take on the world
Oh, Rome has fallen, boo hoo
There's an entire planet of awesome people
I mean to be fair the Han dynasty also fell around this point and shit sucked in China for a good long while, but it wasn't nearly the blow that Rome falling was to certain areas in Europe.
Which should be noted. On the frontiers of the Roman Empire, when Rome did start to decay, it fucking sucked. It really was a "dark age" for those people because Rome was basically the only thing protecting them from the hordes of nomadic peoples coming in from the east.
I've always wondered where exactly hordes of nomadic peoples come from. There's just been so many of them, you'd think they'd have run out of areas to have started from. Do they just leave gaps in territory behind that future hordes settle into?
Knowing exactly zero actual theory behind it, I would imagine it would have to do with a cyclical effect of groups moving out of an area of land after resources had been depleted (hunted out, deforested, etc). Then after 30-40 years the area recovered somewhat. So new groups moved in, grow and expand to a breaking point, and repeat the process.
FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
On the frontiers of the Roman Empire, when Rome did start to decay, it fucking sucked. It really was a "dark age" for those people because Rome was basically the only thing protecting them from the hordes of nomadic peoples coming in from the east.
I'm afraid that by the time of the fall of Rome to the Vandals, life on the frontier had long since passed suck on the way down to Ohmygodmakeitstop. Rome had given up trying to defend the imperial borders in favor of bribing the various invading barbarian armies to go somewhere else.
I've always wondered where exactly hordes of nomadic peoples come from. There's just been so many of them, you'd think they'd have run out of areas to have started from. Do they just leave gaps in territory behind that future hordes settle into?
The tribes involved didn't write (or very few writing survived), so we can only theorize. But we do have a pretty good idea of where they came from initially, based on archaeology and what the Romans themselves theorized (which wasn't always accurate). The first phase of migrations occurred from population displacement from Scandinavia (the various Gothic tribes) and then later from the Eurasian steppes (Hunnic peoples). Its not so much that gaps where left into which future hordes just happened to settle into, but more of a series of displacements that pushed one tribe into another into another, and so on like a set of dominos being knocked over. With Western Roman Empire being pushed up against the Mediterranean, having (initially) strong borders and great wealth, it was the last place of refuge for many of the tribes that had been evicted from their homelands. A lot of the tribes that were pushed up against Rome weren't really looking to destroy it, but to find somewhere safe to live (which the Romans eventually acquiesced to, but being a tyrannical dictatorship at this point, regularly abused the settled tribes into rebellion and war).
After the Romans were exhausted trying to keep the first wave out while also engaging in unceasing civil war, the more predatory tribes that found out that Rome was weak then pushed in to conquer and loot (which, of course, wasn't exclusive to the second wave, but was more prominent then). What set off the domino train is unknown, though. We know from Chinese records that a number of displacements occurred in the turkic steppes due to war, which likely set off the Steppe migrations, and there is ice core evidence of a significant drop in temperatures that would likely have pushed tribes out of more marginal areas of Scandinavian and Siberia, but it is all uncertain.
At least some roman surgeons used honey and/or boiled wine on wounds. They were also pretty sophisticated about keeping the wound sealed off from exposure to the air.
I was going to mention the honey thing if no one else did. Honey doesn't spoil because it has a low moisture content and is acidic, so bacteria and other organisms can't grow in it. Bees after all don't have refrigeration so they needed to evolve other tricks to be able to store honey long term. Romans and many others realized this and smeared honey on wounds, hoping that the same lack of spoilage would occur, and it does work. There are modern experiments being done now to try to figure out how effective it is and when and how it can best be used. So good on them for figuring it out.
On the frontiers of the Roman Empire, when Rome did start to decay, it fucking sucked. It really was a "dark age" for those people because Rome was basically the only thing protecting them from the hordes of nomadic peoples coming in from the east.
I'm afraid that by the time of the fall of Rome to the Vandals, life on the frontier had long since passed suck on the way down to Ohmygodmakeitstop. Rome had given up trying to defend the imperial borders in favor of bribing the various invading barbarian armies to go somewhere else.
Yup, it is interesting to note that, within the inner heartlands of the Roman Empire nothing much really changed when it comes to quality of life stuff.
I mean, it did, but over 100s of years instead of just 10s and generally the changes weren't all bad either for those areas.
The dark ages thing is also a disgustingly Euro centric take on the world
Oh, Rome has fallen, boo hoo
There's an entire planet of awesome people
I mean to be fair the Han dynasty also fell around this point and shit sucked in China for a good long while, but it wasn't nearly the blow that Rome falling was to certain areas in Europe.
Which should be noted. On the frontiers of the Roman Empire, when Rome did start to decay, it fucking sucked. It really was a "dark age" for those people because Rome was basically the only thing protecting them from the hordes of nomadic peoples coming in from the east.
I've always wondered where exactly hordes of nomadic peoples come from. There's just been so many of them, you'd think they'd have run out of areas to have started from. Do they just leave gaps in territory behind that future hordes settle into?
So basically what happens is that most of the time there were a ton of individual tribes running around on the steppes or forests of scandinavia or whatever. Eventually one group gains a local dominance which is pretty messy and bloody generally and forms a confederation. The groups on the outside of this confederation either have to leave or fight, and if they could have fought they would have not let a rival power form in the first place. So they leave, and tell everyone they meet on the way out that there’s this big mean blob of huns, mongols, whatever, back home and they are coming this way, and a lot of times other groups join up with them in getting out. Meanwhile there’s this big settled empire over next door that is overextended anyway, and can’t really control their borders, so everyone decides to move in, because hey its better than the huns, who by this time are catching up to you. Sometimes the Huns/mongols/etc do catch up, and see this nice settled empire with things like cities and farming, and they decide to invade too.
Then a generation or two later the big step empire breaks up, all the now vacant areas repopulate over a couple of hundred years, and the cycle begins again.
Edit: also this wasn’t really in any way limited to the Roman era. Lots of groups such as the celts, Persians, possibly even ancestral groups of the Greeks and Romans themselves all got their start as these kinds of nomad invaders, and they didn’t really stop until Scandinavia christianised and the Russians took over the steppes.
Edit: also this wasn’t really in any way limited to the Roman era. Lots of groups such as the celts, Persians, possibly even ancestral groups of the Greeks and Romans themselves all got their start as these kinds of nomad invaders, and they didn’t really stop until Scandinavia christianised and the Russians took over the steppes.
I think you mean the Turks, because while the Persians were nomadic they had established their civilized foothold by the 9th century BCE, and they never moved very far away from their homeland (around the Caspian sea).
The turks on the other hand were hard-core horse nomads, who came from the steppes north of the black sea, embroiled themselves in the Arab-Byzantine conflict and decided "Lets take this shit for ourselves" once the old Islamic empires were on the decline.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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As far as I know...
Tough it out and pray; amputation; or death: depending on severity.
Amputations and death, yeah.
To prevent infection from getting a hold:
Sterilizing agents (like silver, bromide and iodine). Their use during the American civil war (once there was an established military medical corps) probably saved thousands of lives and prevented the war from becoming an even bigger massacre than it was.
To clean out an infected wound:
Maggots. Maggots are pretty effective when it comes to eating infected and necrotic tissue.
To combat bacterial diseases:
Generally really really toxic shit with questionable effect (like Mercury) or completely useless treatements (like bloodletting).
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Generally they had to perform a primary amputation (to take off the limb) and then a secondary amputation if/when the infection became too bad in the first amputation.
Sometimes multiple secondary amputations.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
But of course in battlefield conditions tender loving care is spread pretty thin. Like there were certainly plenty of amputations during the civil war where in other circumstances they would have tried to save the limb, but in that circumstance you just gotta cut and go.
if you caught some sort of serious infection you were still fucked though, and amputation was still common. In fairness to them though serious infections fucked people up essentially until the invention of modern antibiotics
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I mean Medieval Medicine wasn't -always- totally bunk.
More of a stopped clock thing, to a degree.
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Eh, yes and no. The Medieval ages get a bad rap for being "unenlightened" when that isn't nearly the case. Just historical bias from Renaissance scholars who were fans of Rome.
Indeed. It's built into the very language they (and we still) use to describe these periods. Everything after Rome was the "Dark Ages", until their Roman fandom started up which was a "Renaissance".
like MRSA is what you find in the dictionary if you look up antibiotic resistant bacteria
Imperaboos
I was going to mention the honey thing if no one else did. Honey doesn't spoil because it has a low moisture content and is acidic, so bacteria and other organisms can't grow in it. Bees after all don't have refrigeration so they needed to evolve other tricks to be able to store honey long term. Romans and many others realized this and smeared honey on wounds, hoping that the same lack of spoilage would occur, and it does work. There are modern experiments being done now to try to figure out how effective it is and when and how it can best be used. So good on them for figuring it out.
Grekaboos
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Hardly. I'm reminded of a comment (in a discussion about the flat-earth-immagonnamakearokkit!-guy I think) about how 'science wasn't invented until the 1800s.' People of previous ages weren't stupid, just because they were working with more limited knowledge and basic tools. People were just as invested in figuring out how things worked, how to replicate effects, and how to apply them as we are. It's easy to go, 'oh-ho-ho, bloodletting, those savages,' and ignore the things that actually worked.
The word "science" wasn't invented until the late 1800s. That doesn't mean "science" wasn't invented. There were scientists before then of course, they were called "natural philosophers", and before then just "philosophers".
Over generalization is the source of a lot of misbelief and quackery, like homeopathy (nightshade kills in large doses but helps in small ones, therefore a really small dose will be super effective, right?)
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yeah the early and middle "dark ages" were golden ages of the Islamic world.
ie. dark ages.
It's getting better over time, as more and more stuff gets examined again, or contrasted to newer archeological evidence.
Oh, Rome has fallen, boo hoo
There's an entire planet of awesome people
Well it was a take by european people for the world that they were living in. Less "disgusting" and more "what else would they even know about?"
Yeah, maybe, but that's no excuse for the last 100 years of dialogue and discussion about the time period
MRSA isn't particularly hardy, it's just picked up a bunch of genes that render it resistant to a range of different chemicals produced by soil yeasts in order to get some breathing room from competitive dirt bacteria that we've since exposed trillions of bacteria to.
Expose those same bacteria to alcohol and a couple of completely new chemicals developed to prevent large creatures from eating onion-family plants and now we're taking multiple roots of attack that would take a very lucky bacteria to have the mutations needed to survive all three.
Don't the Dark Ages specifically refer to Europe? In the way nobody here talks about life in the states during the Edwardian or Elizabethan eras...? Pretty sure even the Victorian era usually just refers to places in the Empire.
In historical terminology, a dark age is simply an era where comparatively fewer written primary historical accounts exist compared to what came previously. That our ability to view history directly in that era has "gone dark" as it were. But, yes, for most historical eras, they are considered locally and are primarily just short-hand ways of referencing a given time period and place.
I mean to be fair the Han dynasty also fell around this point and shit sucked in China for a good long while, but it wasn't nearly the blow that Rome falling was to certain areas in Europe.
Which should be noted. On the frontiers of the Roman Empire, when Rome did start to decay, it fucking sucked. It really was a "dark age" for those people because Rome was basically the only thing protecting them from the hordes of nomadic peoples coming in from the east.
I've always wondered where exactly hordes of nomadic peoples come from. There's just been so many of them, you'd think they'd have run out of areas to have started from. Do they just leave gaps in territory behind that future hordes settle into?
Knowing exactly zero actual theory behind it, I would imagine it would have to do with a cyclical effect of groups moving out of an area of land after resources had been depleted (hunted out, deforested, etc). Then after 30-40 years the area recovered somewhat. So new groups moved in, grow and expand to a breaking point, and repeat the process.
I'm afraid that by the time of the fall of Rome to the Vandals, life on the frontier had long since passed suck on the way down to Ohmygodmakeitstop. Rome had given up trying to defend the imperial borders in favor of bribing the various invading barbarian armies to go somewhere else.
The tribes involved didn't write (or very few writing survived), so we can only theorize. But we do have a pretty good idea of where they came from initially, based on archaeology and what the Romans themselves theorized (which wasn't always accurate). The first phase of migrations occurred from population displacement from Scandinavia (the various Gothic tribes) and then later from the Eurasian steppes (Hunnic peoples). Its not so much that gaps where left into which future hordes just happened to settle into, but more of a series of displacements that pushed one tribe into another into another, and so on like a set of dominos being knocked over. With Western Roman Empire being pushed up against the Mediterranean, having (initially) strong borders and great wealth, it was the last place of refuge for many of the tribes that had been evicted from their homelands. A lot of the tribes that were pushed up against Rome weren't really looking to destroy it, but to find somewhere safe to live (which the Romans eventually acquiesced to, but being a tyrannical dictatorship at this point, regularly abused the settled tribes into rebellion and war).
After the Romans were exhausted trying to keep the first wave out while also engaging in unceasing civil war, the more predatory tribes that found out that Rome was weak then pushed in to conquer and loot (which, of course, wasn't exclusive to the second wave, but was more prominent then). What set off the domino train is unknown, though. We know from Chinese records that a number of displacements occurred in the turkic steppes due to war, which likely set off the Steppe migrations, and there is ice core evidence of a significant drop in temperatures that would likely have pushed tribes out of more marginal areas of Scandinavian and Siberia, but it is all uncertain.
On that note, 3,000 year old honey from Egyptian tombs is still edible.
Yup, it is interesting to note that, within the inner heartlands of the Roman Empire nothing much really changed when it comes to quality of life stuff.
I mean, it did, but over 100s of years instead of just 10s and generally the changes weren't all bad either for those areas.
So basically what happens is that most of the time there were a ton of individual tribes running around on the steppes or forests of scandinavia or whatever. Eventually one group gains a local dominance which is pretty messy and bloody generally and forms a confederation. The groups on the outside of this confederation either have to leave or fight, and if they could have fought they would have not let a rival power form in the first place. So they leave, and tell everyone they meet on the way out that there’s this big mean blob of huns, mongols, whatever, back home and they are coming this way, and a lot of times other groups join up with them in getting out. Meanwhile there’s this big settled empire over next door that is overextended anyway, and can’t really control their borders, so everyone decides to move in, because hey its better than the huns, who by this time are catching up to you. Sometimes the Huns/mongols/etc do catch up, and see this nice settled empire with things like cities and farming, and they decide to invade too.
Then a generation or two later the big step empire breaks up, all the now vacant areas repopulate over a couple of hundred years, and the cycle begins again.
Edit: also this wasn’t really in any way limited to the Roman era. Lots of groups such as the celts, Persians, possibly even ancestral groups of the Greeks and Romans themselves all got their start as these kinds of nomad invaders, and they didn’t really stop until Scandinavia christianised and the Russians took over the steppes.
I think you mean the Turks, because while the Persians were nomadic they had established their civilized foothold by the 9th century BCE, and they never moved very far away from their homeland (around the Caspian sea).
The turks on the other hand were hard-core horse nomads, who came from the steppes north of the black sea, embroiled themselves in the Arab-Byzantine conflict and decided "Lets take this shit for ourselves" once the old Islamic empires were on the decline.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Wat?
It's euro-centric because it's a term used to describe Europe.