Could You Survive In The Middle Ages?

Hey there! Welcome to Life Noggin. Ooh a D20! My lucky day! Guess what, gang! Today we’re heading over to the fifth annual Life Noggin Medieval Fair! Don’t ask what happened with the first four. It’s fun to dress up in all this cool armor, but to help us /really/ get into character, we should probably learn more about what life was actually like back in Medieval times — and how likely we would have been to survive back then. The medieval period, often referred to as the Middle Ages, is a term used to loosely define the period of European history between the fall of Rome in the 5th century CE and the beginning of the Renaissance around the 14th century. You may think of it as a magical time of knights and nobles, but before you get too excited rolling up your real-life DnD characters, most of the people back then were peasants. Might still be a bit til’ you can save up for that heavy armor. Though if you were still in the fighting spirit, duels were a thing back then. They started in Europe in the 11th century, and weren’t officially abolished until the beginning of the 19th century. Imagine surviving the harsh reality of the Middle Ages just to die over some dispute with your neighbor. That's a pretty tragic way to go if you ask me. Karen, these chickens are mine. Get lost. And speaking of death, one of the most devastating things to happen back in those times was the Black Death. Occurring near the end of the Middle Ages, around the middle of the 14th century, the Black Death was a horrific global epidemic of plague that proportionately caused the most amount of deaths than /any other/ known epidemic or war up to its time. The plague spread from person to person through the air, as well as by the bite of an infected flea and rat — but no one really knew that back then. It understandably caused a bunch of panic, leading people to flee from the cities to the countryside. That didn’t help much though, as the Black Death affected livestock like goats and sheep. Peasants also usually lived with their animals in the same hut, so you can see how there really was no escape from the devastation. With all of the inferior medical practices that they had back then, it’s a wonder that anyone survived. I mean vaccines didn’t even really become a thing until around the turn of the 18th century after Edward Jenner — who is thought of as the founder of Western vaccinology — inoculated a young child in 1796 with cowpox, who then afterwards showed an immunity to smallpox. Today, because of vaccines, smallpox no longer exists outside the lab. That’s good, because according to the CDC, it seems like 3 out of 10 people who got it generally didn’t survive, making it a pretty terrifying thing to get back in the Middle Ages. And while you’ve probably heard of bloodletting — that creepy practice where leeches were supposed to suck out an illness — what very possibly was even more painful back then was their “treatment” for hemorrhoids. Nothing too fancy, just a searing hot poker applied directly to the site of the problem. Ouch! Oh, and there’s some evidence to suggest that urine was generally seen as an antiseptic at the time, so patients really just had a rough go of it all around — even if they did manage to survive everything else. So what do you think? Could you have survived the Middle Ages? Is there any other time period you'd like us to travel to next? Let me know in the comments below. Enjoyed this episode of Deblocked? Check out the previous one we did. Hold up gang! Did you see that!? It's probably Santa! Wait a minute, that's not Santa. It's just a big pile of plastics. Darnit. I was worried about this happening. As always, my name is Blocko, this has been life noggin, don't forget to keep on thinking!

Channel: Life Noggin

Views: 947,899

Rating: 4.9391842 out of 5

Keywords: life noggin, life noggin youtube, youtube life noggin, life noggin channel, education, education channel, life noggin face reveal, edutainment, edutainment videos, blocko, blocko life noggin, science, technology, educational, school, the middle ages, Survive, the dark ages, peasant, kings, queens, knights, black death, history, smallpox, medieval times, facts, dear blocko

Id: DwPJVM-uepM

Length: 3min 30sec (210 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 04 2019