When you take into account the very-avoidable causes of death (e.g. syphilis, rampant alcoholism, poverty) then 55 should be no deterrent. Just be smart, make money, don't catch syphilis, don't be a drunk just because everyone else was.
Massive morphine problem too, starting with civil war vets.
Just how do you avoid the infant mortality? You can't just wave that away unless the terms of this fantasy were cherry picked in your favor. Let's say you somehow could be born 150 years ago, and. . . oops, you died as an infant.
Try again. I didn't say infant mortality was avoidable, but assuming you get beyond it, 55 ain't bad considering it was largely the fault of dumb behavior.
Dying as an infant isn't so bad either. You hardly even know what's going on at that age. Probably your soul gets recycled as another infant.
Lots of infants were probably born to the hordes of drunks. 19th century USA was one of the drunkest scenes in world history.
There are a lot of countries now where you won't find TP in the bathroom, especially in homes. But there will be a hose next to the toilet. Water cleans better than paper anyway.
I wouldn't want to be pregnant all the time even if they all survived, which they wouldn't. I wouldn't want to wear rags and wash the blood out. We wouldn't even be able to run. Life would be pretty dismal unless you're an aristocratic widow in England with lots of servants. And even then the food would suck.
Seems like back then, things were better, no tv. No Internet, just living off the land.
You do realize there were many cities in 1873, so a large segment of the US population did not in fact, 'live off the land'. For rural whites, there were so many premature deaths caused by bacterial/viral outbreaks, tuberculosis, insect/snake bites, and occasional attacks by the pesky Native-Americans who didn't like their kind traveling through and stealing their land. Cows would eat grass that had dangerous bacteria, the farmers would milk the cows, and people would die from the bacteria since pasterurization was not common at this time (Abraham Lincoln's birth mother died from this). If you were a white, urban male, you likely struggled to put food on the table, lived in extremely poor quality housing, and had very little education if you didn't come from money. If you were not white, your life pretty much sucked no matter where you lived - by 1873, the white Southerners were regaining control of the South, Jim Crow was rearing its head, and if you didn't end up lynched by nasty mobs of pissed off former Confederates, you were most likely stuck in a crappy sharecropping situation, which would eventually drive you further north, where people were slightly less racist in public but most likely as racist in private. If you were an Asian or Latin-American immigrant, you were a 5th class member of society, treated as sub-human chattel who were ideal for testing out explosives on railroads and in copper mines.
If you were a white woman, you had a strong likelihood of dying in childbirth because you had undiagnosed Bright's Disease or preclampsia, and your educational prospects were slim - you had very little chance of being much more than a breeding factory for your husband; you had no voting rights so good luck changing your status until 50 years later. If you were a minority woman, well, imagine how much worse that was for you.
FYI There never were halcyon days in this country. Life was always hard from the day settlers colonized the first patch of North American soil, death came quickly and painfully, and you had very little to show for the work that almost killed you and would lead to a premature death. This country was never united - it was always a tenuous merger of interests that were almost as different as they were similar. It didn't take long for the sectional cracks to show, and once the South realized the North was cleaning its economic clock and would soon make the rules, they rebelled and seceded. Few people were successful, and for those ones, they built mansions to rival the ones European aristocrats had and paid little attention to the shacks and slums in the urban blightfests nearby. Make America Great Again? I'm still waiting for it to become Great ever - sure, many great accomplishments and for some people, upward mobility has given them a shot at wealth their ancestors never dreamed of - but in general, this country has always been hard on people. To quote Cormac McCarthy, 'what we got ain't nothing new'.
Seems like back then, things were better, no tv. No Internet, just living off the land.
Things were NOT better 150 year ago, especially if you weren't a white male.
There are millions of people living in shanties in cities like Lagos, Manila, Port-au-Prince, Mumbai, etc. that survive in worse living conditions than the average white person in the US 150 years ago.
it would also be a typical conservative oversight to think that someone who lives to 50 in an age of mean 40 median 50 will feel like a modern 40 or 50. they lived harder lives. they will have endured life without modern medicine and probably feel like they are 70 now.
You write like a moron. Do you know what punctuation is?
Seems like back then, things were better, no tv. No Internet, just living off the land.
You do realize there were many cities in 1873, so a large segment of the US population did not in fact, 'live off the land'. For rural whites, there were so many premature deaths caused by bacterial/viral outbreaks, tuberculosis, insect/snake bites, and occasional attacks by the pesky Native-Americans who didn't like their kind traveling through and stealing their land. Cows would eat grass that had dangerous bacteria, the farmers would milk the cows, and people would die from the bacteria since pasterurization was not common at this time (Abraham Lincoln's birth mother died from this). If you were a white, urban male, you likely struggled to put food on the table, lived in extremely poor quality housing, and had very little education if you didn't come from money. If you were not white, your life pretty much sucked no matter where you lived - by 1873, the white Southerners were regaining control of the South, Jim Crow was rearing its head, and if you didn't end up lynched by nasty mobs of pissed off former Confederates, you were most likely stuck in a crappy sharecropping situation, which would eventually drive you further north, where people were slightly less racist in public but most likely as racist in private. If you were an Asian or Latin-American immigrant, you were a 5th class member of society, treated as sub-human chattel who were ideal for testing out explosives on railroads and in copper mines.
If you were a white woman, you had a strong likelihood of dying in childbirth because you had undiagnosed Bright's Disease or preclampsia, and your educational prospects were slim - you had very little chance of being much more than a breeding factory for your husband; you had no voting rights so good luck changing your status until 50 years later. If you were a minority woman, well, imagine how much worse that was for you.
FYI There never were halcyon days in this country. Life was always hard from the day settlers colonized the first patch of North American soil, death came quickly and painfully, and you had very little to show for the work that almost killed you and would lead to a premature death. This country was never united - it was always a tenuous merger of interests that were almost as different as they were similar. It didn't take long for the sectional cracks to show, and once the South realized the North was cleaning its economic clock and would soon make the rules, they rebelled and seceded. Few people were successful, and for those ones, they built mansions to rival the ones European aristocrats had and paid little attention to the shacks and slums in the urban blightfests nearby. Make America Great Again? I'm still waiting for it to become Great ever - sure, many great accomplishments and for some people, upward mobility has given them a shot at wealth their ancestors never dreamed of - but in general, this country has always been hard on people. To quote Cormac McCarthy, 'what we got ain't nothing new'.
America was greatest from 1980-2010. We had peace, prosperity, little crime, and little wokeness.
Seems like back then, things were better, no tv. No Internet, just living off the land.
Sure. Why not experience time travel in my life? I think living under harsher conditions would be good for my character and soul. Plus I would love to read about history through newspapers.
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