• nebulaone@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      I know that life expectancy was mostly low because of infant mortality. Still the advancements in medicine cannot be denied.

      • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        15 hours ago

        And if you applied modern medicine to hunter gatherers, yeah. They’d live longer.

        But it barely counteracts the negative effects of the trash we eat the horror we live and the toxic squalor we do it in.

      • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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        17 hours ago

        True, but the advancements boil down to late 19th century ideas like “wash your hands after the autopsy before delivering Ms Green’s baby”, which the medical establishment pushed hard against at the time. Tells you a lot about the medical mindset…

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

        “Despite his research, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it.”