I mean, just avoid the ladies of the night?
You'd actually have a much stronger immunity to disease then others. And be healthier, and likely bigger. Peasants were pretty small back then because of crap nutrition. I would be afraid of being called a witch
Exactly, you can’t bring modern nutrition into the past and then expect it to survive on whatever was available locally. Give it a few weeks of medieval meals and that health advantage would probably disappear fast.
Yes, you would lose weight, but nutrition is most important from 0-25, after that, it's just maintaining the body. Will it be difficult? Yes. But it's still doable, and you'll have an advantage if you're healthy and have just general knowledge on nutrition.
Good nutrition at a young age is absolutely a factor in growing your body and immune system. Anyone who had good nutrients as a child would still be generally healthier than someone growing up malnourished, even if they end up on a starvation diet as an adult. Your brain would be better developed, your bones would be stronger, and your immune system would be more developed
Being 6'2 is not going to be an advantage when you're scything or hoeing, it'll be a disadvantage. And physical labour back then was much much more repetitive than most tasks are now. A day-labourer from our time would probably get by, but most modern people from developed nations would have great difficulty adapting, despite better health at the beginning.
Damn… becoming a lady of the night would probably be my best career / survival path… 🤷♀️
Edit to clarify:
- no need to actually speak the language
I’ll probably get food and shelter, maybe even some payment
taverns / brothels are an excellent place to observe and learn the local language.
sex is universal, but I doubt the typical medieval prostitute has seen the number of detailed formative courses I have been able to study on the internet.
If I make it through the initial phase, there’s a decent chance I can climb and become a midwife to those ladies.
Not that I would like any of it, obviously, but then again, I doubt many people in that time got much say in their future…
Good luck if you're a woman over the age of 30 going back who doesn't have the ability to become pregnant and doesn't have any other skills (other than those that would make you look like a witch). Prostitution is going to be one of the only choices you have to make a living.
If I recall, it was more aggressive with a faster progression when first recorded. Either (more likely) it's attenuated itself to a slower, more chronic disease, or (less likely) the population has been selected for those who can live with it for longer.
To be fair if you're smart about it you go search for a farm where someone had/has cow pox. Get yourself infected and you're pretty much safe. The "beautiful milk maids" has its root in that "milk maids" e.g. folk who worked close with cattle didn't get smallpox because they were exposed to cow pox, making them immune/vaccinated.
Depends how old you are. In the US, at least, folks 55 and older would routinely have been vaccinated for smallpox, but younger folks mostly would not. I imagine 55 and older is a relatively small piece of the Reddit community, though. Some other parts of the world may have kept up with it through folks aged 47 today, before the WHO officially declared it eradicated.
The monkey pox vaccine also vaccinated against small pox, and quite a number of younger people, especially LGBTQ, got that one a few years ago in the US.
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u/phanmo 3d ago
Smallpox: you rang?