Health risks of travel in early-modern Britain

https://dralun.wordpress.com/2023/02/17/the-health-risks-of-travel-in-early-modern-britain/

by Petiver • 3 years ago

61 65 3 years ago

dralun.wordpress.com

A_D_E_P_T2• 3 years ago

Travel is still risky. Automobile accidents are, by a substantial margin, the leading cause of death in young people.

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

kunwon1• 3 years ago

One might argue that a fall from a horse in the 17th century is more injurious than an automobile accident in the 21st

AlbertCory8• 3 years ago

we don't have much data for then, but we do have it for now. See my other comment.

b112• 3 years ago

A fall from a horse, with mild injury, was far more serious though.

No antibiotics, and geneally no operating for internal body cavity injuries.

bemusedthrow75• 3 years ago

s/enterprising/independently wealthy/

AlbertCory8• 3 years ago

I don't have a dog in this fight, honest! /s

but I got curious, so as a fun math exercise: go crazy!

             HORSES:

https://horsesonly.com/horse-riding-accidents/

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:

https://www.valuepenguin.com/car-accident-statistics#injurie...

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.

thmsths3• 3 years ago

So cars are roughly 10 times safer than riding horses? And that's without accounting for the difference in distance travelled. The number of injuries for the car are staggeringly high because of how common they are. I bet if we enacted policies that made owning a horse as likely as owning a car, we would also find that every minutes a several horse riders get injured.

nradov2• 3 years ago

A horse can also injure you when you're not riding it. A friend of mine was badly hurt by her horse when she tried to lead it into a trailer and it went nuts. Similar types of incidents can potentially happen with cars, but anecdotally seem quite rare. There probably aren't any good statistics on this, though.

nitwit005• 3 years ago

I'm sure the modern equestrian statistics aren't comparable, as the people putting the most hours in tend to be doing sports, rather than daily work as in the past.

Modern horses are dramatically larger than what was available in the past, which means some injuries have more force involved.

Symbiote• 3 years ago

Trains: 5 railway passengers killed in the EU in 2021, and around 20 seriously injured. 261 billion passenger-km travelled. 0.02 deaths per billion km.

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.)

nugget• 3 years ago

I’m pretty sure the opioid epidemic is the leading cause of death in the US. Enormous numbers of Americans are dying from fentanyl and other poisons, but the media doesn’t like to cover it and the Government doesn’t like to talk about it.

robotresearcher4• 3 years ago

Among young people it is currently guns, until recently was cars, and drugs is about half of either, but rising. Drugs has recently risen to be about the same as cancer.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761#:~:text=T....

prawn• 3 years ago

I have no sense of its general coverage in the zeitgeist, but this month the White House announced Overdose Awareness Week "to focus the nation’s attention on the devastation caused by illicit fentanyl and other drugs" and also announced funding for a variety of things to attempt addressing it. Their recap links to media coverage in a variety of sources.

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.

tpolzer• 3 years ago

Over all age groups? Definitely not, cardiovascular diseases and cancer get ~everybody in the end: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-deaths-b...

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-...

roughly2• 3 years ago

I wonder how much this generalizes across cultures. Early-modern Brits weren’t known for their hygiene, nutrition, or general medical aptitude.

Randomizer42• 3 years ago

Very true, and let’s not forget inbreeding

Balero• 3 years ago

Compared to who? Modern day, of course they weren't. 1500's Britain was quite poor, but not more so than many other places.

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.

roughly2• 3 years ago

Not compared to present day, no, but most of the folks who interacted with Europeans at that time (including the natives in the Americas) commented on how sickly they looked and how badly they smelled. Nobody was springtime fresh, but early modern Brits were apparently notable even then.

ulizzle3• 3 years ago

Pretty much everything could kill you back then.

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

throwbadubadu• 3 years ago

Wolves fight in packs too, for hunting prey.. a single wolf sticking and fighting to death, and a knight with a sword in armor not managing to seriously wound it earlier? Tbh doesn't sound realistic at all, given also todays knowledge about the behaviour of wolves. They had also plenty of food and other opportunities back then. Given how fatal any injury can be any predator is taking on any unnecessary fight very carefully.

vharuck• 3 years ago

It might have been a rabid wolf, which would explain the aggression. And the duration was probably exaggerated. If the fight lasted a while, like 10 minutes, then the knight could've died from exhaustion or heat stroke afterwards. If we assume "died in the fight" was also exaggerated, we could include blood loss that went untreated (everyone else was busy fleeing). If he died that night or the next day, then infections are possible killers.

ulizzle3• 3 years ago

I don't think so either but I thought it was cool. But wolves were an ever-present danger in Europe, that's why they hunted them to extinction. Especially during plague times, plenty of carrion to scavenge and habituation makes them lose their fear of humans.

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."

Toutouxc• 3 years ago

knight in full armor fought a wolf for hours

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.

Anon4Now• 3 years ago

In Ben Franklin's autobiography, he described his journey from Philadelphia to Boston. It took two weeks by boat, traveling down the Delaware River and up the Atlantic coast. The shipped wrecked off the coast of Massachusetts, and he had to swim to shore. I guess the TSA lines don't seem so bad in comparison.

pavlov• 3 years ago

The distance from Philadelphia to Boston is not much greater than Paris to Lyon which takes two hours by train today.

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.

darkerside2• 3 years ago

s/reasonable/world-class

Lolaccount• 3 years ago

Health risks of travel in post-modern Britain.

A nation awash with sewage and corrupt leaders leading to episodes of ill-health and death.

md_• 3 years ago

I was struck while recently reading David Grann's "The Wager" by how little people understood scurvy at the time. Grann writes about how some doctors believed it to be a reaction of the body to being away from solid land for too long, and attempted a treatment by burying patients up to their necks in soil.

Health risks of travel in early-modern Britain

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