Do you believe life is safer now than it was in the 1400s?

I believe it is safer now because... it is easier to live for a long time.

I feel life is not safer today, but then again I really don't know how they lived in the 1400's. The problems are different I imagine.

Because we have antibiotics, sterile surgery. We had plenty of disease then we just hadn't figured out how to diagnose and treat. Half of them were still considered being possessed by the devil. We have sanitation.

Yes, significant lower murder rates, you don't have to worry about getting robbed by bandits hiding in clover, and you get to live beyond 20 years of age. If you overlook that whole nuclear weapons that can vaporize the world five times over some of which is in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists thing, you would practically have to be retarded not to think that the world is safer today than it was 600 years ago.

Hell, even a certain user whom I won't mention by name, it starts with a L and ends in a D, would admit that things are improving as opposed to going in a hell basket compared with how they were in the good ole' days of 1454.

I think it is safer now. Better medical science, a better understanding of social sciences, better housing, more efficient and safer production methods and no barbarians roaming the lands.

Absolutely, there's no question we're safer. We had most of the same diseases back in the 1400s too, we just had no clue what they were. We live so much longer now and we're healthier.

However, we're also overly-focused and worried about our health and this tends to make us think we're not as healthy as we were or that modern things are making us sick. We have a tendency to call things "epidemics" that aren't. Polio, that was an epidemic. Obesity, I'm sorry, but it isn't. It's like we've forgotten how bad things really were. So, we keep looking for new things to scare us. Bird flu, ah!

I don't know enough about the 1400s.

Life spans are longer and various mortality rates are lower, so I'm going with safer.
And isn't it likely that a lot of the "new" diseases have been around for a long time, but were simply unidentified because medical knowledge wasn't as developed as it is now?

Yes because even though we do have many things to work on still, there isn't anywhere near the amount of savagry towards others as you had back then; the ignorance about medicine, health issues, etc.; the violence towards kids, women, animals. Now there's more time for learning, more leisure time.

I believe it is safer now.

Life is no safer back then , and life is no safer these days because of terrorists
and we have murders roaming our streets

And there violent sexual predators roaming the streets as well

And now our food is not safe look at the Peter Pan peanut butter contamination
and there have been other cases of food poisoning as well

In the meat and vegetables we eat as well

Safer now. We have evolved and become more aware of certain dangers.

I should say so. I don't need to worry about a piss pot being emptied on my head as I'm walking down the street. Or a rampant disease there is no cure for. Or someone trying to cure the rampant disease with leeches or some other disgusting cure worse sometimes than the ailment.
Or trodding in horse crap, or working 20 hour days for slave wages... there are lots of ways I'm safer now.

I once read a case from the 1800s when a woman was dying due to hemorrhage after childbirth....guess what they did to treat her? Bled her, but alas, they couldn't save her life. That is one thing that got worse before it got better. Midwives knew what they were doing, generations of generations. Then the doctor's came along. During their education they only read about childbirth because they weren't allowed to see women's genitalia, so the first time they did it in as doctors was the first time they did it ever, and they became very fond of forceps, floating forceps, meaning before the baby made it down the canal, an impatient doctor would just grab two prongs, grab the head and pull it and then wondered why women were bleeding to death. Or dying in childbirth because the 'doctor' didn't wash his hands.

Safer..... Isn't a word I would use Healthier? .......... Yes, of course Life expectancy has probably doubled since the 1400's

Of course it is.

Honestly, I don't know much about how they lived in the 1400's. We're probably safer, though, because of advances in science.

I believe it was Thomas Hobbes that described life during the medieval period as: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

It's not just about disease and cures that make life safer now. It's also that everybody (at least within advanced society) has individual worth. Whatever your sex, race, or social status--you have a right to live.

It's the same. It's all relative.

> I should say so. I don't need to worry about
> a piss pot being emptied on my head as I'm walking
> down the street. Or a rampant disease there is
> no cure for. Or someone trying to cure the rampant
> disease with leeches or some other disgusting
> cure worse sometimes than the ailment.
> Or trodding in horse crap, or working 20 hour
> days for slave wages... there are lots of ways
> I'm safer now.


piss pot
There are rampant diseases whith which there is suggested as no cure for, they still on occasion use leeches, the horse crap is better and slave wages? It's called minimum wage. Sorry, try agin

I had a job llike tht once.

Were you a yeoman, a villein or a serf?

This is a picture of cloudy practicing her Whirling Dervish ritual. (For real!)

I took 2 busloads of senior citizens on a field trip.

Indeed.

...and they all kept saying "I remember when this was a block of flats..." so you drove away and left them in the field.

Tempting...indeed.

God I love it here...

It would depend on where I am living. In some places life realy hasn't changed much in last six hundred years. But let's just assume you mean the place where I am right now - six hundred years ago, let's see... that's before the European arrival, if I'm not mistaking. I'd be the white girl in the middle of the Native land, full of diseases that they never had (especially since I'm sick right now). And wasn't 1400 the Little Ice Age? That means I'd be freezing my ice twice as much as I am right now in a little Native hut, wearing leather clothes. No Columbia jacket or warm boots or anything like that, and no coffee shop to buy a tea when I'm cold. And food, no vegetables or fruits. Would have to rely on moose jerkey or whatnot to get me through the winter.

So no, I don't believe I would be safer in the 1400s than I am now.

...Except for Uncle Jeffery

yes I believe it is

the perils of life endure

We have penecellin. Life expectancy is much higher now.