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Re:Dumb Ways to Die: Printed Ephemera by libraryofbabel on Tuesday November 25, 2025 @08:51AM (#46045768)
True; in fact mortality in 17th-century London was so bad that it required a net flow of migrants just to keep the population stable. Most of all, you were at much higher risk of plague during the plague epidemics.

But rural Europe was no picnic either - you would still be likely to die in all sorts of painful ways, from sepsis, diseases, accidents, childbirth, etc. And my god, it would have been dull.

Honestly, if you forced me to go back to the 17th century, I would probably take the risk and live in London. At least there is the possibility of crossing paths with Samuel Pepys, Christopher Wren, the early Royal Society etc. while you sit in your coffeehouse reading a freshly-printed news sheet.

Re:Dumb Ways to Die: Printed Ephemera by HeyLaughingBoy on Tuesday November 25, 2025 @10:33AM (#46046756)
> while you sit in your coffeehouse reading a freshly-printed news sheet

A PhD student once mentioned to me that when people envisage themselves in history, they always assume they'd be upper class. No one ever thinks that they'll be poor :-)

Re:Dumb Ways to Die: Printed Ephemera by jmkni on Tuesday November 25, 2025 @11:34AM (#46047515)
It's like when people do past life hypnosis, everyone is a King or a Warrior or an Aristocrat
Re:Dumb Ways to Die: Printed Ephemera by Isamu on Tuesday November 25, 2025 @01:29PM (#46048968)
(Clairvoyant) Ah yes I am seeing your past life, you were an utterly unremarkable person, doing the same things people around you did, saying the same things people around you said, neither especially kind or cruel, but making sure that you stayed alive as much as you could help it.
Re:Dumb Ways to Die: Printed Ephemera by dredmorbius on Tuesday November 25, 2025 @11:04AM (#46047129)
Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms is among the books that discusses this.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms>

Cities simply could not grow without net in-migration until the development of sewerage, municipal waste removal, fresh-water systems, and public health in general.

Another favourite illustration, "The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City", showing the overall decline in mortality from 1800 to present:

<https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uTWEATUzgxk/TXQoTibILtI/AAAAAAAAA...>

From: <https://economicspsychologypolicy.blogspot.com/2011/03/conqu...>

Note that for all the vaunted advances of 20th century medicine, the needle hardly moved at all from 1920 through 1990, and mortality increased from 1950 -- 1970. There has been substantial improvement from 1990 through 2000.