Message from @mixmasterJ
Discord ID: 564795591729872919
My viewpoint is... if medicine HADN'T been lethal I honestly believe civilization wouldn't have surivived. In england for example circa 1800s.... women were popping kids out at 12 and didn't really stop....
if it wasn't for their "stupidly conceived medicine" i believe there's no way society could have continued without disastrous logistical failure...
They've always been doing that, most of them just died young. Medicine allowed for all 12 of them to live but after a while they slow down.
Medicine in fact greatly increased the odds that those children would die.
How so? Which one?
Between venesection and... in the case of the 1800s.... mercury arsenic and antimony were given in doses that border on lethal today.
So then how do you explain the massive population growth?
bloodletting was a primary form of medicine.... and they would bleed the sick or injured until they fainted
ah
because... our species is incredibly resilient
For thousands of years our population was roughly the same
seriously, it is a fact that their systems of medicine killed and maimed and accomplished no good outside of placebo
Where was our resilience then?
the population explosion is a result of enormous changes that occured in the last 200 years.
That enormous change was medicine and diet.
Medicine was a major factor... but the biggest change was getting rid of bloodletting and dramatically lowering the dosages of some of the poisons they prescribed.
Ie... medicine became significantly less lethal in the last 100 years
generally speaking
I don't understand
Medicine phased out bloodletting. It fell out of fashion. I believe bloodletting was probably the CORE of regulating population levels from time immemorial.
The Native Americans didn't practice that...
Very Eurocentric of you
Depends on the tribe but yea
Right so
If medicine is used to reduce population, why has the population being going up very quickly since introduction?
I'm talking about the civilizations that conquered and such
took over the world etc
I mean medicine has always existed
So then why did the population grow so quickly during the High Middle Ages?
I mean the modern form
you're talking about vaccines and antibiotics etc
aye...
Food surplus
basically the population will always grow pretty much uncontrollably.
unless there is a system that regulates it
and so for thousands of years ... out of necessity... systems of population regulation have existed
one of the primary forms of this is medicine
historically
Again ruling powers wouldn't wouldn't want to depopulate
I disagree with you there...