Health risks of travel in early-modern Britain
dralun.wordpress.com
dralun.wordpress.com
If the US had reasonable train service, you’d get from central Philly to central Boston in the time it today takes just to get to the airport, go through security and board the plane.
In Europe, routes often cost more than equivalent air routes. Though for some, comfort, convenience, and environmental considerations trump costs.
I'm sure others may disagree. They can cry all they want. Reality has demonstrated that this is a reasonable system, even if it isn't rational by their standards.
A nation awash with sewage and corrupt leaders leading to episodes of ill-health and death.
I’ve been ill for about a month now, so I’ve been reading a lot. I’m going to add the danger of wolves.
There is a French account of how packs used to raid villages and this one knight in full armor fought a wolf for hours, and they wound up killing each other in combat.
I don’t know if that’s true but apparently it was quite commonplace
But plate armor has its own weaknesses, like a poor field of vision and all the weight slows you down. Likely died from blood loss like you said.
I’m trying to find it, it was a project Gutenberg tome.
I don’t know how I got into this rabbit hole but I’m still a little feverish so back at it again
Let me see if I can find the story, I was feverish yesterday so I didn't, but I can today.
The behavior of wolves as we currently think of it has been influenced a lot by politically correct thought forms. "In France, historical records compiled by rural historian Jean-Marc Moriceau indicate that during the period 1362–1918, nearly 7,600 people were killed by wolves, of whom 4,600 were killed by nonrabid wolves."
There’s very little a wolf can do to a person in armor. A fight between an armored knight armed with any kind of sword and a single wolf would probably only last a minute and would end very badly for the wolf. Wolves are extremely careful, cowardly and their only fighting move is to approach you and bite you. Source: have spent a lot of time with various wolfdogs, wolf hybrids and actual wolves.
It may have been somewhat more risky back then -- in terms of fatalities per mile traveled, if not fatalities per hour traveled -- but I don't think that's perfectly clear. A fall from a horse, which has happened to me more than once, is a lot less injurious than an automobile accident. It would be interesting to see a comparison table.
Besides, the risks didn't stop every enterprising English and Protestant German youth from embarking upon the Grand Tour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour
No antibiotics, and geneally no operating for internal body cavity injuries.
but I got curious, so as a fun math exercise: go crazy!
HORSES:
> According to the research (2002) on horseback riding danger statistics, the rate of hospital admissions for equestrians is 11.8/1000 riders or, assuming one hour per day riding on average, 0.49/1000 hours of riding. (1)
> 7. 81% of equestrians get injured at some point in their riding career.
CARS:
we have some numbers that don't quite compare:
>In 2020, Americans had a 1 in 63 chance of getting in a car accident.
> At least one driver or passenger is injured in 43% of car crashes. There were 2,282,015 injuries reported in 2020 — that's 6,252 per day, or four per minute.
Well, all of that refers to injury -- which may be serious, but may also be very mild. A sprained ankle is an injury. Horseback riding is a lot like a contact sport; it's very easy to pick up musculoskeletal injuries from getting pulled or thrown (or kicked, which has also happened to me once,) but only a very small proportion of those lead to serious and lasting disability.
If we look solely at fatalities, a different picture might emerge. Automobile injuries are, I surmise, more likely to be very serious or fatal. And, of course, motorcycles are in a different plane of existence entirely.
It was flat where it happened, but we have mamy quite steep roads here as well. So could have ended badly. (So it was just a allmost crash)
Horses are more dangerous than you might credit them to be.
or in practical terms: "what's the likelihood you'll be injured if you do it every day"?
And more than powerful enough to kick someone in the head and end them in an instant if they really wanted to.
I'm not even horse-experienced, so my knowledge is mainly from TV.
Modern horses are dramatically larger than what was available in the past, which means some injuries have more force involved.
Cars: the best EU country has 3.3 per billion-km, the worst 9.8.
(Not included: deaths from people not travelling, like trespassers on the railway, maintenance staff.)
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761#:~:text=T....
"Poisoning was the leading cause of preventable death for all ages, combined, for the ninth consecutive year and was the leading cause of preventable death for every age from 22 to 68. This is largely due to the opioid epidemic affecting millions of people in the United States."
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/deaths-by-demograph...
But your point is made: drug poisonings are now the scourge of adults in the main years of life.
Why not 18 or under? That's what we've typically used as the cutoff between childhood and adulthood.
I think I know why.
If your implication of some skulduggery is about guns, the previous paper showed vehicle accidents as the leading cause.
The point stands, why are they using 20 years old as a cut off for adulthood, when generally it’s 18 and below?
And interesting she published a paper in 2010 that had a cutoff of 18.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20370746/
I can tell you why - the data looks significantly different and tells a different story than the authors want to tell.
Why hint rather than say what you mean?
I'm unhappy with a doctor playing games with statistics by manipulating the data, under the guise of actual science, in order to advance a political agenda.
Everyone should be unhappy with that.
But interesting you didn't comment on the other statements in my reply.
It uses an age range of 1-19, excluding children 0-1 years old and including adults who are in their 18th and 19th years. So sure, when you do this bullshit maybe you can produce the answer your audience wants to see / which will play well in the press / which will lead to clicks. But it's not honest. The honest statistic for the U.S. is 0-18(exclusive) years old, and when you do the honest thing you see that death by firearm-related injury is not the leading cause of death for minors in the U.S.
The deliberately deceptive statistic is driven by including as many 15-35 year old males as possible. This is the age range when males in gangs are extra killy.
Of course, people and front pages quickly tire of 'boring' things like that and unfortunately get more excited about other events prone to popping up in a large country.
You're right for 15-49 year olds, where drug overdoses only recently (around 2015) overtook cancer: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/causes-of-death-in-15-49-...
If you look at the general populace for basically anywhere before modern times, they all had bad hygiene nutrition and medial aptitude by modern standards. Looking at what the 0.1% could manage doesn't tell you much about a society.