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Tbh milkmaids were the prettiest women because they would get mild cases of cowpox instead of skin wrecking smallpox and it was the origin of the smallpox vaccine (vacca means cow in latin).
And they had to be clean, so washed daily, and were always inside, in a very clean environment.
You are a milkmaid?
Edit: My joke was based on a corrected typo, “we’re”. IDGAF about online typos unless they have a humorous aspect. Cheers!
Huh I didn’t know humans could get mild cowpox
A great many pathogens can be “weakened” with various processes, heat is one, but also the surviving strains in a living being that beat the disease via immunity may also carry weakened strains and this is where we learned to deliberately contract smallpox via poking someone’s skin pustule and poking ourselves with that pus.
Gross but highly effective. This is how George Washington inoculated his army. (Which of course he learned about through a Reverend in Boston who learned about it from his slave, Onesimus, which makes sense as smallpox was ravaging Africa for over 10,000 years, they figured it out eventually.)
Thank you so much for sharing this interesting information.
Yes, it’s super interesting. The reason the word ‘vaccine’ derives from the Latin ‘vacca’ (cow) was because we observed that people who contracted the cowpox gained some protection from smallpox. We investigated that connection, did a bunch of testing and research (which included early scientists infecting themselves on purpose in some rather gross ways), and developed the theory of vaccines.
The history of early modern medicine is very cool.
Do medieval shows only hire conventionally unattractive men? I always thought the convention was to have attractive people play important parts or “good” characters, regardless of gender, but admittedly I don’t really watch many medieval shows.
Witcher?
Game did a good job of having the ugliest polish man with a pitchfork in the town…
Then the local alchemist has a dump truck ass with eyeliner on.
If you’re talking about my girl Keira Metz, she’s a witch, not a standard alchemist. Woman definitely engages in performance enhancing magic
Had to look up. Got alchemist and herbalist confused.
It was tomira. I did remember the ass lol
I looked her name up on google and half the images are indeed about said dump truck lol
When your entire idea of middle ages comes from people funking around marginalia creatures this is what happens. But the middle ages were an early-capitalistic moment with more dynamism than you’re told. Even under feudalism people must have had personal interocurses, private and economical. Imagine the scams of the time.
Yep just look at the guilds. The Hansa (Hanseatic Trade League) owned several cities and harbours in the Baltic and North sea.
In Frankfurt, an inventor developed an early form of steam engine, but was bullied and denied by the boatsmakers guild.
Many interesting stories who are more than just peasants rolling in filth.
And even the city republics would destroy the primitive view of Hollywood on the freedoms of the medieval person. Not to speak of the Dithmarschen peasant republic or the swiss confederation and their wars of independence against the HR Emperor.
Milkmaids famously shaved their armpits after lathering them with double cream.
This is a trope in all middle ages media I’ve seen. I’ve been watching someone play KCD2, and it’s not as bad… but still there and jarring.
The only place where I can think of where it seems more fair is, ironically, some animation? Barring anime’s sexism… problems, there’s less incentive for that, heh. I liked Avatar’s peasants:
Help! Help! We’re being repressed!
they’re both drunk, though. so that’s more than normal.
Alcohol would be considerably safer to drink than most water you could find
And it was way tamer than what we commonly drink now.
It was similar to Table Beer, iirc.
for consumption by children and by servants.
I don’t know what’s wrong with your toddler, he has barely touched his lager.
This is largely a myth. It would only apply to large cities, and then, the fresh water sources were frequently protected by law in cities.
Alcohol itself doesn’t actually destroy the pathogens in question- booze was made by microbes, after all, and as for bacterial… only beer and liquors was boiled, and simply adding it to already-contaminated water wouldn’t make it safer; since that only happens at much higher concentrations of alchohol than you’d find, even in liquors. It does inhibit bacterial growth, though, usually people were mixing booze into water to make things taste better. (Similar to how modern restaurants will frequently add lemon slices to cover the taste of tap water.)
in terms of maintaining hydration, alcohol- even weak alcohols- are very much not good for that, even 3% alcohols, particularly in high-heat or under activity.
Boiling water was discussed in Roman and Greek writings well before the medieval period, as well- mostly in the context of making it not taste funky; and usually they were talking about filtering it to remove contaminants (for example, near mining operations.)
Again, streams rivers flowing were generally safe for consumption and would only become unsafe as a result from urban pollution, of which, there were controls in place to protect at least some water ways and wells.
