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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to know the answer to that, because I get those things with some frequency, and antibiotics clear them up very quickly and effectively: after 10/15 days of feeling shitty, I get immediately better within 24 hours. It's hard to know beforehand, though, whether it's really an infection or just a draggy cold. All the 'alternative' type remedies I've tried have been completely ineffective.

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Well one answer is that they didn't. Infection was a major cause of death. When you see a brutal dentist scene in a historical film it gives shivers, the missing context is that the patients life was probably being saved.

Whenever my old relatives talk about how they grandparents lived up to 120 years old in remote Russian villages without any doctors, it gives shivers. Last relative died at age 98, so much for modern civilization.

And not like they were on life support when hitting over 100, they were out in the fucking field working.

But yeah, eventually this will disappear and all we have is a book saying that 100 years ago average life span was 30 years so we are doing great increasing it to 60 :D

That's bullshit. Scientists are actively studying populations with high longevity to find exactly why they live so long. No one is trying to hide it.

I'm sure one of the causes for longevity is letting weak children die. Those that survive will naturally live longer than average in a similar population where weak children are saved and then make statistics look bad...

I guess they didn't mention the part about half their siblings dying before they hit the age of twenty, as was common in those times. Cholera. Spanish Flu. Polio. If you can survive all that you're one tough bastard.

Things I learn what not to discuss in healthy discussions :)

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