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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

I remember many years ago the Economist pointed out one of the Rothschilds died young of something that would have been readily solvable with penicillin, but no amount of money could get you something that didn't exist yet.

I'm going to go with a cautious "yes" to the first: the ages at death of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_monarchs are not great.

"No" on the second (king is never going to have to worry about food security, that's for the peasants)

And "life opportunties" .. bit of a divide by zero situation. As king, you technically have all the opportunities. But you can only do things which actually exist at the time. And you're bound by the social and religious conventions of the time, which you mess with at your peril. Doing so worked for Henry VIII but not for the various Georges. See, for example, the controversy over whether James 6 might have been gay.

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Addendum: food security was assured, food choice was very restricted by modern standards. Remember the medieval period is pre-Colombian exchange, so no potatoes, no tomatoes, no peppers. Some spices, but a different range to what modern palates are used to. No refrigeration either, so you're limited to seasonal availability. In the winter that means you're eating a lot of root vegetables and bread, even if as king you're guaranteed a supply of fresh meat and fish (from the royal holdings dedicated to producing it).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury

This is where you get the memes about shocking medieval Europeans with a time travelling bag of Doritos: both the bag and its contents are completely impossible items for them.

Worth noting that durable items could be shipped long distance - precious metals, gems, textiles - but foodstuff shipping was more limited to high value density stuff like spices and the European wine trade.

Speaking of wine: no modern stimulants. No coffee, no tobacco, no weed, no cocaine, no opiates. No painkillers, no anasthesia. For all those situations, you have one option: alcohol.

A huge number of critical historical decisions were taken by people who would fail a brethalyser.

Quite a few precursors to modern stimulants though, there were many Solanaceae (nightshade) variations in Europe, from harmless through high to deadly. Papaver somniferum (opium poppy) got about the place quite a bit (according to archaeologists at least.

Hemlock and henbane were both used as painkillers and dulling agents .. up to unconsciousness and death, depending on dosage.

Added: Monastery herb gardens often had quite the range, eg: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/blog/ar...

Also willow bark was chewed as a painkiller because of the acetylsalicylic acid it contains.

Quite powerful, BTW. I've used it while hiking for a headache. Damn thing tastes like it's half-aspirin, bleh... but the headache went away.

> No refrigeration either, so you're limited to seasonal availability.

Well, except for food preserved via pickling, salting, drying, smoking, fermenting, sugaring, and confit. Which makes for quite a long list.

Plus, various foods like grains, root vegetables, onions, and even apples could be stored for months using proper techniques. They didn't have the luxury we have of not paying much attention to how we store things and just replacing them when they go bad, so they became quite good at this.

> pickling, salting

Yes, but also my understanding is that the preservation technique of that name involves much more salt than modern palettes are willing to tolerate, and also salt itself was much more limited in supply.

Despite this, salt as a preservative was indeed critical to civilisation.

> fermenting

True, and also I want to say "blessed are the cheesemakers" etc. here. :)

There's nothing intolerable about pickled vegetables. I eat them all the time

Properly picked, as in preserved and can be stored ambient for extended periods, or "pickled" as sold in a supermarket where the small print says "keep refrigerated after opening"?

I have been told there is a huge difference between the two.

Qualify it as three types.

There are the fermented pickles

There are the pickles that get mixed with prefermented preservative (usually vinegar/salt) and pressure-canned

And then there are the pickles that get flash cooked or not cooked, mixed with preservative, and refrigerated for a limited time

Traditional "properly picked" also had to ve consumed after being open or stored cold. Once you open it, backterias can get in and spread.

There is some difference in taste, due to modern additiomal conservants and minor changes in receipta, but not all that much.

That is why some salt-preserved foods are traditionally soaked before consumption: to remove the excess salt.

Also because salt itself was much more valuable back then you wouldn't have as much or even any salt in your fresh food so you use the "preserved in an intolerable amount of salt" food products with the unsalted food products to get a quite tolerable middle ground at consumption time. Mash potatoes and pickle bits mmm

> Mash potatoes and pickle bits mmm

And thus potatoes and sauerkraut was born.

While sauerkraut fermentation uses salt, the main technique preserving the cabbage is the fermentation and sauerkraut is thus not super salty (about 1% of the weight is salt)

Without the potatoes, they hadn't arrived from the Americas by this point.

Clearly, they meant rutabegas, turnips, and cabbages.

> pickling, salting, drying, smoking, fermenting, sugaring, and confit. Which makes for quite a long list

None of which preserves the taste/nutrition well for a wide range of foods like greens/fruits/vegetables, you the limits in seasonal availability don't get resolved

There's a difference of being a bougie bitch expecting to have fresh greens in the dead of winter with a meter of snow on the ground and being thankful you stored the fall's harvest in such a way that you have food to last until that meter of snow has melted. Maybe they could have utilized green houses earlier, but when did it become practical to make clear sheets of glass?

The point is they had many workarounds for being "limited to seasonal availability." That doesn't mean everything was available or as nutritious.

Plus the excellent point that dylan604 made, they weren't bougie bitches.

>Plus, various foods like grains, root vegetables, onions, and even apples could be stored for months using proper techniques. They didn't have the luxury we have of not paying much attention to how we store things and just replacing them when they go bad, so they became quite good at this.

I would also expect them to have various special variaties of apples/pears that actually improved their taste with storage. For example a variety that was best with 2 months of storage, another one that was best after 6 months.

Then you have cheeses, yoghurts, milk. Those things could be available year round. One would expect the king of France to have quite a variety of cheeses at his disposal. Then we have meats prepared in a hundred different ways. From simple roasting, to gelling, pickling like modern hams. And so on.

Then we have various types of wild mushrooms. I wonder if the king ate wild mushrooms and who picked these mushrooms for him... Poisoning would be so easy to get away with if he did.

It would be tough without potatoes, tomatoes and peppers, but I think food-wise I'd be just fine (assuming money and power).

Exactly. People today seem to forget why fermentation was discovered in the first place.

> Addendum: food security was assured, food choice was very restricted by modern standards.

Not by the standards of the world 5th percentile, as in the question posed. The 5th percentile today is mostly subsistence farming and doesn't have access to imported foods or own a refrigerator (though there probably is one in their local village, and they may well own a mobile phone).

It doesn't work for everything but clove act as a decent local painkiller. I once broke a tooth and cloves in my mouth made me go through the day until my appointment to the dentist.

The taste wasn't so fun though.

And I would hazard a guess that the dentist was also only mildly impressed by the smell

I don't know where the "no painkillers" meme comes from, but opium's been around forever and is among the easiest drugs to harvest: just lightly score the poppy seed pod and collect the latex. It was as known and available in the middle ages as in the ancient Greek world.

https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.92.15_supplement.P...

Alcohol, though, is great for dissolving opium into an easily ingestible potion, whence one gets dwale or laudanum.

Dwale is technically a nightshade preparation, not opium-based. Laudanum is opium.

> A huge number of critical historical decisions were taken by people who would fail a breathalyzer.

[citation needed]

The idea that historically people went around hammered because the water supply was poor is a myth.

See the consumption records for the 18th-century American colonists. The rates are astounding.

The water myth is not the cause.

> Doing so worked for Henry VIII

Apart from his painful, smelly leg ulcers that he had to tolerate for years

Controversy... yeah... Historians have seen the mountain of evidence think one thing, and people ignorant of history who think he had something to do with their favorite version of the Bible know The Lord wouldn't have chosen a gay "author".

He wasn't gay, but his many male lovers might have been. :D

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