6 ms·

These are great points. I specialize in the period a bit after the 14th century (the early modern era, roughly Columbus to the Industrial Revolution) and often

These are great points. I specialize in the period a bit after the 14th century (the early modern era, roughly Columbus to the Industrial Revolution) and often say something similar to my class. I add these as points #3 and #4: - Diseases that we would consider to be debilitating were so common that it was completely normal for a person to suffer from, say, smallpox, dysentery and a gangrenous limb in a 10 year period. All in a world with no painkillers whatsoever (oddly enough, opiates were almost never used in a clinically effective manner in surgery prior to the late 17th century). The sheer level of physical pain that people dealt with on a daily basis is staggering and would have taken a psychological toll. - It was also completely normal for someone to have dealt with the loss of multiple siblings and children in infancy. You commonly see families that had 10+ children, of which only two or three survived into adulthood. So not only warriors but virtually everyone would have had something similar to what we'd today call PTSD. (Incidentally, this is also my theory as to why putti and the baby Jesus motif are so popular in medieval and Renaissance art - what today seems like a tacky baby painting was, in that period, deeply resonant with virtually everyone's personal experience of the loss of a beloved family member in infancy).

hprotagonist 8y ago
as an aside to your second point, there's a fascinating area of study looking at why much byzantine iconography stayed away from things like Pieta and representations of a suffering/crucified Christ, and stayed much more focused on other themes. Turns out, it correlates relatively well with "where the plague wasn't."
froasty 8y ago
I call shenanigans on all four points. 1. Delayed adulthood along with the carceral infantalization that accompanies it is purely a modern phenomenon. 2. Jousting was not nearly as common as popular culture presupposes. The notion that pitched battles, particularly ones that involved the nobility fighting personally and carelessly in melees, were encountered so frequently as to suffer from CTE goes against the historiography of the era. 3. Smallpox lasts about two weeks (if you live). Dysentery lasts about one week (if you live). Gangrenous limbs either kill you, come off, or recover. None of these cause persistent pain. If I get the flu every year, I'm going to have a worse time than these people, regardless of the existence of opiates. 4. Low infant mortality is also a purely modern phenomenon. It also ignores all known sociology on infant mortality. When infants and children die in highly mortal societies, their value is accordingly diminished. In many cultures where infant mortality is extremely high, they're not even considered fully human until around their first birthday. Humans are amazingly resilient when it comes to persistent stress and develop culture-ways to cope.
- benbreen 8y ago
  1. This is an on-going debate to a certain degree (I mainly have encountered it via Phillipe Ariès's Centuries of Childhood). But I have never bought the argument that childhood is a modern invention. If you actually read primary sources from the period it is abundantly clear that parents sought to protect their children, that they treated children as different from adults, and that children were expected to behave in a manner different from adults. To me, that's a childhood, albeit one that looks very different from modern norms due to the existence of widespread child labor, etc. 2. It's too strong of a claim to say that medieval or early modern warriors suffered from CTE (mostly because retroactive diagnosis has a terrible track record) but I think it's very reasonable to say that warriors of this period suffered from severe psychological and physical distress that derived directly from their training. Likewise, you're leaving out the fact that nobles hunted and rode on horseback (with no helmet!) on a daily basis and that these are exceptionally dangerous occupations by modern standards. 3. Smallpox might last a matter of weeks as an active illness. But it is permanently disfiguring. Elizabeth I is just the most well-documented of what we can imagine were literally millions of people who suffered trauma from smallpox scars. Similarly, many illnesses of the period (like malaria, polio, scrofula, etc) were chronic. As for gangrenous limbs, Henry VIII suffered from a wound (from recreational jousting no less) that ultimately killed him via a leg ulcer, but it took years of agonizing pain to do so. Maybe not gangrene, but the point remains that a world of sharp objects + no antibiotics is no fun for anyone. 4. It's very difficult for me to imagine that the pain of losing a child ever really goes away, even if you live in a world where it's commonplace. Likewise, the evidence about children not being considered "fully human" until age 1 relies on naming practices. But it ignores things like murder prosecutions for infanticide which were widespread in the period - if babies weren't considered fully human, why did courts care if they were killed? And finally, most childhood mortality occurred after age 1, regardless. Edit: I mostly agree with your critique of the OP, by the way. But I think the fact that we agree on humans from the past being more or less like us conflicts with your points about parents in the past being relatively un-concerned about the loss of a child, etc.
  - froasty 8y ago
    1. Do you include adolscence within childhood? Because that might be where we're disagreeing. How would you define childhood? 2. I don't think a comparison between cultures where horse-riding is fundamental to one where it is primarily a leisure activity makes much sense when it comes to estimations of danger. Yes, hunts could result in injuries; I don't disagree there. However, if attrition was severe enough to impede the function of the martial culture, it wouldn't be actively propagated. 3. Yes, disfigurements and scarring would be common in the aftermath of epidemics, but in those situations, it's so common that to form cultural persecuting complexes around it is difficult to justify. Lepers, on the other hand... 4. That's really my entire point: the reason it's so hard for you to imagine is because, if you live in the United States, the entire existence of death has become divorced from culture and daily existence. It's an aberration and a taboo. In a culture where death during childhood is common, there are cultural forms that account for it. That doesn't mean that it is or isn't a loss, but that it accomodates and integrates that event within a broader chain of being. As far as judicial injunctions against infanticide go, early mortality is incidental to life, not fundamental. Actively destroying a potential person, particularly within a truly local culture, when it isn't already part of the folkways, is of course going to result in reprisal. However the very existence of cultures that practiced exposure shows that it isn't fundamental to the human condition to viscerally value the lives of infants unconditionally. As far as PTSD goes, it's largely about being unable to cope with a traumatic event. In a functional society, it seems unlikely to me that PTSD strictly as a pathology surrounding child loss would be a thing--and the sociology surrounding it as I've read it supports that assertion. I really think our disagreement resides in our perceptions of how durable/fragile humans can be under duress. I think humans are especially resilient, particularly if given adequate cultural coping mechanisms within a culture.

hprotagonist 8y ago

as an aside to your second point, there's a fascinating area of study looking at why much byzantine iconography stayed away from things like Pieta and representations of a suffering/crucified Christ, and stayed much more focused on other themes. Turns out, it correlates relatively well with "where the plague wasn't."

froasty 8y ago

I call shenanigans on all four points. 1. Delayed adulthood along with the carceral infantalization that accompanies it is purely a modern phenomenon. 2. Jousting was not nearly as common as popular culture presupposes. The notion that pitched battles, particularly ones that involved the nobility fighting personally and carelessly in melees, were encountered so frequently as to suffer from CTE goes against the historiography of the era. 3. Smallpox lasts about two weeks (if you live). Dysentery lasts about one week (if you live). Gangrenous limbs either kill you, come off, or recover. None of these cause persistent pain. If I get the flu every year, I'm going to have a worse time than these people, regardless of the existence of opiates. 4. Low infant mortality is also a purely modern phenomenon. It also ignores all known sociology on infant mortality. When infants and children die in highly mortal societies, their value is accordingly diminished. In many cultures where infant mortality is extremely high, they're not even considered fully human until around their first birthday. Humans are amazingly resilient when it comes to persistent stress and develop culture-ways to cope.

benbreen 8y ago
1. This is an on-going debate to a certain degree (I mainly have encountered it via Phillipe Ariès's Centuries of Childhood). But I have never bought the argument that childhood is a modern invention. If you actually read primary sources from the period it is abundantly clear that parents sought to protect their children, that they treated children as different from adults, and that children were expected to behave in a manner different from adults. To me, that's a childhood, albeit one that looks very different from modern norms due to the existence of widespread child labor, etc. 2. It's too strong of a claim to say that medieval or early modern warriors suffered from CTE (mostly because retroactive diagnosis has a terrible track record) but I think it's very reasonable to say that warriors of this period suffered from severe psychological and physical distress that derived directly from their training. Likewise, you're leaving out the fact that nobles hunted and rode on horseback (with no helmet!) on a daily basis and that these are exceptionally dangerous occupations by modern standards. 3. Smallpox might last a matter of weeks as an active illness. But it is permanently disfiguring. Elizabeth I is just the most well-documented of what we can imagine were literally millions of people who suffered trauma from smallpox scars. Similarly, many illnesses of the period (like malaria, polio, scrofula, etc) were chronic. As for gangrenous limbs, Henry VIII suffered from a wound (from recreational jousting no less) that ultimately killed him via a leg ulcer, but it took years of agonizing pain to do so. Maybe not gangrene, but the point remains that a world of sharp objects + no antibiotics is no fun for anyone. 4. It's very difficult for me to imagine that the pain of losing a child ever really goes away, even if you live in a world where it's commonplace. Likewise, the evidence about children not being considered "fully human" until age 1 relies on naming practices. But it ignores things like murder prosecutions for infanticide which were widespread in the period - if babies weren't considered fully human, why did courts care if they were killed? And finally, most childhood mortality occurred after age 1, regardless. Edit: I mostly agree with your critique of the OP, by the way. But I think the fact that we agree on humans from the past being more or less like us conflicts with your points about parents in the past being relatively un-concerned about the loss of a child, etc.
- froasty 8y ago
  1. Do you include adolscence within childhood? Because that might be where we're disagreeing. How would you define childhood? 2. I don't think a comparison between cultures where horse-riding is fundamental to one where it is primarily a leisure activity makes much sense when it comes to estimations of danger. Yes, hunts could result in injuries; I don't disagree there. However, if attrition was severe enough to impede the function of the martial culture, it wouldn't be actively propagated. 3. Yes, disfigurements and scarring would be common in the aftermath of epidemics, but in those situations, it's so common that to form cultural persecuting complexes around it is difficult to justify. Lepers, on the other hand... 4. That's really my entire point: the reason it's so hard for you to imagine is because, if you live in the United States, the entire existence of death has become divorced from culture and daily existence. It's an aberration and a taboo. In a culture where death during childhood is common, there are cultural forms that account for it. That doesn't mean that it is or isn't a loss, but that it accomodates and integrates that event within a broader chain of being. As far as judicial injunctions against infanticide go, early mortality is incidental to life, not fundamental. Actively destroying a potential person, particularly within a truly local culture, when it isn't already part of the folkways, is of course going to result in reprisal. However the very existence of cultures that practiced exposure shows that it isn't fundamental to the human condition to viscerally value the lives of infants unconditionally. As far as PTSD goes, it's largely about being unable to cope with a traumatic event. In a functional society, it seems unlikely to me that PTSD strictly as a pathology surrounding child loss would be a thing--and the sociology surrounding it as I've read it supports that assertion. I really think our disagreement resides in our perceptions of how durable/fragile humans can be under duress. I think humans are especially resilient, particularly if given adequate cultural coping mechanisms within a culture.