As we all know, in ancient times, due to underdeveloped medical technology, barren medical equipment, the average life expectancy of the ancients is far from catching up with modern people. Even if the emperor such a high position, the identity of the doctor does not worry about, the average life expectancy is only about 40 years old, the ordinary people are not even dare to think about.
If it were the end of life, perhaps this value would not be so low. But in ancient times, very few people were able to live to a ripe old age, and a minor illness could easily take away a life if you weren't careful.
Of course, the minor illness is for the modern medical level. Since mankind entered the modern era, medical technology has also revolutionized the progress, before that, a fever and cold may have the potential to cause death, not to mention some other modern diseases. Today, I will give you three ancient people are most afraid of "terminal illness", in modern times but was broken, can easily treat the disease, so that we have a more comprehensive knowledge of the ancient medical level.
The first is consumption, I believe we have seen this disease in many costume dramas, the patient manifested for a long time coughing, and even coughing the audience are lungs, and, this patient is generally as thin as a wood, the development of the late stage will cough up blood, it looks like a terminal disease.
In fact, consumption is called tuberculosis, a disease caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Since it's caused by bacteria, the best response is antibiotics. But penicillin, the granddaddy of antibiotics, wasn't discovered until 1929 by British bacteriologist Fleming, and it was a pipe dream to get antibiotics in ancient times.
So, the ancients could only rely on their own immune system to fight this disease, and the number of people who could survive it was extremely low, which explains what is "life and death in the sky". Therefore, consumption is undoubtedly sitting on the top of the list of ancient terminal diseases.
The second is diabetes, for modern medicine, diabetes is the blood glucose concentration is high, to be honest, even if the development of medical technology to today, this disease can not be rooted. However, modern people can control it by injecting insulin, and it has slowly become a kind of "health disease", with the terminal disease is completely unrelated. Moreover, with the popularization of synthetic insulin, the price of an insulin has dropped from the original sky-high price to the cabbage price level, which is affordable for any class.
But in ancient times, not to mention insulin, even diabetes they can not diagnose a so, rumor has it that Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty had diabetes. A time to seek medical advice, there is no progress, until later the Xiongnu offer a kind of strange medicine, only to control his diabetes, and Han Wudi cure diabetes are so difficult, the ordinary people do not even have to think about it, suffering from the disease can only wait for death.
However, it is reassuring that the incidence of diabetes in the people is not high, after all, this is a "rich people disease", it is difficult to suffer if not a big meal is very difficult to get, and the people want to get this "terminal disease", the odds are also quite low.
The third is rabies, which, of course, is incurable in modern medicine, but only after the onset of the disease. If the rabies virus is carried in the body but there is no onset of disease, it can still be contained by the rabies vaccine. But in ancient times, there was no vaccine for dog bites. We can only pray that the dog does not carry the rabies virus, to put it bluntly, it is still a disease that depends on the life of the attack or not.
However, it is said that in ancient times, there was a kind of local recipe for treating rabies, which was to kill the dog that bites people and take out its brain and smear it on the bitten place, saying that it can prevent rabies attacks. Of course, this method has not been practiced by modern people, and there is no medical basis for it. In the end, it is still the ancient people's self-consolation.
From these three ancient diseases, it is not difficult to see the gap between ancient and modern medicine, the main reason why the average life expectancy of ancient people is low. In fact, if you can live in good health, ancient and modern life may not be different, but the world is always full of too many germs and dangers, think of our modern medical level, is really too much happiness than the ancient people.