Looking at all these illnesses that were much more widespread then makes me think again of something I’ve long wanted to ask someone smarter than me
When you read stuff written in the early 20th century very often you see writers complaining of needing rest because of ‘nerves’ or ulcers and the like, the Soviet Politburo in Stalins time for instance were constantly taking weeks off at a sanitarium or spa to deal with nerves or exhaustion or other illnesses you seldom hear about anymore, is this because we’ve found medicines or is it a lifestyle thing or was it all psychosomatic?
It's a good question, because one of the things that has become clear about health is that in general, people back then were just a lot less healthy. There was lots of malnutrition and deficiencies, average heights were lower, shin bones show scarring from problems (see the recent Spanish Flu work), women had much higher total birthrates accompanied by miscarriage/stillbirth rates matching those, childhood infections caused hidden damage that would truncate lifespans many decades later... Considering the burden of disease and increases in frailty, would it be all that surprising if there were many cases of idiosyncratic person-specific dysfunctionality or chronic illnesses that couldn't be diagnosed any more specifically or treated better than 'go take a few weeks off'? (Note how we continue to struggle to deal with autoimmune disorders or the many diseases which manifest no more specifically than 'being tired' or 'feeling bad'.)
To be honest it would not surprise me if the "nerves" etc of the Politburo were due to stress from being hypervigilant of the risk of being purged at any point in time, aided and abetted by copious amounts of vodka.
I also remember on my first trip to the former Soviet Union in the early 90s being surprised by how people used "nerves" as a bit of a catch all for stress, exhaustion, through to full psychiatric issues in a way that was unfamiliar to me
Fantastic research and very interesting. Quick question I understand you're hoping to have your work published as a book? In the meantime are you happy for me to quote your work in an academic work linked to this substack?
Fascinating. I'm reading a lot of history at the moment, and it seems to me all these histories are interlinked and intertwined in a beautiful mess: maths/logic, materials, military, political/society, medical, physics.
Maybe not quite a technology, but another omission might be that livestock breeding seems to have been much more prevalent than in the ancient world and various sheep, dog and horse breeds were more productive. Not sure if the Romans even knew selective breeding was possible.
Weapons and armour also surpass Roman standards probably in the high middle ages, suits of armour and crossbows were more advanced than the ancient equivalents, as well as the metallurgy to make them.
Breeding is an interesting one, yes. I'm not yet totally sure how well-known or widely practised it was as a purposeful strategy to improve breeds. Will have to follow up and check.
Weaponry is one that I left out, rather than the author or the translator. This was mainly as the discussion revolved around gunpowder again, and many of the changes they describe in tactics and fortifications in particular were really to do with the rise of gunpowder.
What's interesting about armour and crossbows is that I don't think it was yet clear to them what those had looked like in the Ancient World. What they could read on the subject made it sound like there were plenty of ancient technologies that had been lost, and which sounded like more advanced devices than their own - think of Archimedes's devices at the siege of Syracuse. The rise and development of archaeology likely resulted in many people lowering their estimation of the Ancients' abilities.
'Not to mention “an instrument for making screws with great dispatch”'
Is this referring to using a lathe or a casting? Not sure if it was possible to use a single point tool to machine threads at this stage or not. I do know that this is close to the beginning of the heigh-day of the 'mother of all machine tools'.
Intriguing one isn’t it? I suspect the details can be found in either the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions or the Academie des Sciences’s journal - the author seems to have drawn heavily on those. And yes, I have seen some indications that machine tools were seeing some improvements already in the 17thC - long before the famous ones!
By 1700, they were confident that the ancients had been outdone, but were they right? You express skepticism that some of these were new, but I think most of them were known to the ancients. There was rapid invention, but that something was unknown in 1600 or 700 doesn't mean it was unknown in 100BC.
Latitude is particularly striking. Everyone knows the ancients measured latitude!
What are these vines brought from Germany to the Canaries? Grapes? Well, it was the ancients who did the harder work of naturalizing them in France. To survive in the Canaries, they just have to revert to the ancestral type. Did the ancients have a theory of naturalizing plants? None that survives...
I wonder, did either author mention spinning wheels or horizontal looms? The Romans had neither, and if you look at the enormous labor savings from both machines in the production of clothing, perhaps the most important consumer good in pre-modern economies, is surely is worth noting.
Hmm not that I can see! It's possible they thought they were extremely ancient, so weren't worth noting? After all they were looking for things the ancients had but which were unknown to the moderns, and their focus on modern developments seems to have instead been to do with the fibres used rather than the machinery.
In 2011, the Ribe Viking Center published "From Flax to Linen" (edited by Bo Ejstrud) recreating an 11th century Danish linen undershirt. Using much the same technology as would have been common in the western Roman Empire, it took them 354 hours of labour to make this single garment, with weaving and spinning requiring 107 and 188 hours of work respectively.
By the 16th century the replacement of warp weighted looms by horizontal looms and the replacement of drop spindles by advanced Saxony wheels (capable of making strong warp threads) would have drastically increased productivity. Estimating how much more productive is hard, but my personal correspondence with modern hobbyists suggests perhaps 50% labour savings, and John Munro in his 2001 paper "Wool and Wool-Based Textiles in the West European Economy, c.800 - 1500" suggests savings my have been closer to 66.6% on spinning and weaving. With productivity increasing progressively over the period as the technology gradually improves, alongside many other medieval advances in textile production like mechanical fulling.
In the ancient period this work was overwhelming done by women at home, for family use. So it's not surprising if many classical historians skipped the subject as uninteresting. Looking at classical Roman clothing, you can tell they are using much simpler tailoring/cuts vs Renaissance Europe, which results in less fabric wastage. While early modern Europeans often seem to wear many more layers than what you usually see in classical art. I think it's clear that even before the industrial revolution, Europe had seen great technological advances in the textile industry vs the classical period, which I expect allowed for increases in public consumption.
Looking at all these illnesses that were much more widespread then makes me think again of something I’ve long wanted to ask someone smarter than me
When you read stuff written in the early 20th century very often you see writers complaining of needing rest because of ‘nerves’ or ulcers and the like, the Soviet Politburo in Stalins time for instance were constantly taking weeks off at a sanitarium or spa to deal with nerves or exhaustion or other illnesses you seldom hear about anymore, is this because we’ve found medicines or is it a lifestyle thing or was it all psychosomatic?
https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/medicine/nerves-neuroses
From a quick scan that looks like exactly the kind of thing I’ve been looking for to answer my questions about this stuff
Thankyou very much
In some ways that feels very similar to the seratonin hypothesis.
Great question by Lee, and interesting reply too! I'd often wondered about the frequent mention of nervousness too.
It's a good question, because one of the things that has become clear about health is that in general, people back then were just a lot less healthy. There was lots of malnutrition and deficiencies, average heights were lower, shin bones show scarring from problems (see the recent Spanish Flu work), women had much higher total birthrates accompanied by miscarriage/stillbirth rates matching those, childhood infections caused hidden damage that would truncate lifespans many decades later... Considering the burden of disease and increases in frailty, would it be all that surprising if there were many cases of idiosyncratic person-specific dysfunctionality or chronic illnesses that couldn't be diagnosed any more specifically or treated better than 'go take a few weeks off'? (Note how we continue to struggle to deal with autoimmune disorders or the many diseases which manifest no more specifically than 'being tired' or 'feeling bad'.)
To be honest it would not surprise me if the "nerves" etc of the Politburo were due to stress from being hypervigilant of the risk of being purged at any point in time, aided and abetted by copious amounts of vodka.
I also remember on my first trip to the former Soviet Union in the early 90s being surprised by how people used "nerves" as a bit of a catch all for stress, exhaustion, through to full psychiatric issues in a way that was unfamiliar to me
But we do hear about those illnesses. We’ve just renamed them to stress or mental illnesses.
Fantastic research and very interesting. Quick question I understand you're hoping to have your work published as a book? In the meantime are you happy for me to quote your work in an academic work linked to this substack?
Thanks Kathleen! Yes, feel free to quote the substack.
"collect together the minutest parts and fractions into one plain total" surely means the development of integral calculus
Aha, you may well be right. Will add an update raising this possibility.
Fascinating. I'm reading a lot of history at the moment, and it seems to me all these histories are interlinked and intertwined in a beautiful mess: maths/logic, materials, military, political/society, medical, physics.
Maybe not quite a technology, but another omission might be that livestock breeding seems to have been much more prevalent than in the ancient world and various sheep, dog and horse breeds were more productive. Not sure if the Romans even knew selective breeding was possible.
Weapons and armour also surpass Roman standards probably in the high middle ages, suits of armour and crossbows were more advanced than the ancient equivalents, as well as the metallurgy to make them.
Breeding is an interesting one, yes. I'm not yet totally sure how well-known or widely practised it was as a purposeful strategy to improve breeds. Will have to follow up and check.
Weaponry is one that I left out, rather than the author or the translator. This was mainly as the discussion revolved around gunpowder again, and many of the changes they describe in tactics and fortifications in particular were really to do with the rise of gunpowder.
What's interesting about armour and crossbows is that I don't think it was yet clear to them what those had looked like in the Ancient World. What they could read on the subject made it sound like there were plenty of ancient technologies that had been lost, and which sounded like more advanced devices than their own - think of Archimedes's devices at the siege of Syracuse. The rise and development of archaeology likely resulted in many people lowering their estimation of the Ancients' abilities.
Fascinating!
Great article: thanks very much.
'Not to mention “an instrument for making screws with great dispatch”'
Is this referring to using a lathe or a casting? Not sure if it was possible to use a single point tool to machine threads at this stage or not. I do know that this is close to the beginning of the heigh-day of the 'mother of all machine tools'.
Intriguing one isn’t it? I suspect the details can be found in either the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions or the Academie des Sciences’s journal - the author seems to have drawn heavily on those. And yes, I have seen some indications that machine tools were seeing some improvements already in the 17thC - long before the famous ones!
By 1700, they were confident that the ancients had been outdone, but were they right? You express skepticism that some of these were new, but I think most of them were known to the ancients. There was rapid invention, but that something was unknown in 1600 or 700 doesn't mean it was unknown in 100BC.
Latitude is particularly striking. Everyone knows the ancients measured latitude!
What are these vines brought from Germany to the Canaries? Grapes? Well, it was the ancients who did the harder work of naturalizing them in France. To survive in the Canaries, they just have to revert to the ancestral type. Did the ancients have a theory of naturalizing plants? None that survives...
I wonder, did either author mention spinning wheels or horizontal looms? The Romans had neither, and if you look at the enormous labor savings from both machines in the production of clothing, perhaps the most important consumer good in pre-modern economies, is surely is worth noting.
Hmm not that I can see! It's possible they thought they were extremely ancient, so weren't worth noting? After all they were looking for things the ancients had but which were unknown to the moderns, and their focus on modern developments seems to have instead been to do with the fibres used rather than the machinery.
In 2011, the Ribe Viking Center published "From Flax to Linen" (edited by Bo Ejstrud) recreating an 11th century Danish linen undershirt. Using much the same technology as would have been common in the western Roman Empire, it took them 354 hours of labour to make this single garment, with weaving and spinning requiring 107 and 188 hours of work respectively.
By the 16th century the replacement of warp weighted looms by horizontal looms and the replacement of drop spindles by advanced Saxony wheels (capable of making strong warp threads) would have drastically increased productivity. Estimating how much more productive is hard, but my personal correspondence with modern hobbyists suggests perhaps 50% labour savings, and John Munro in his 2001 paper "Wool and Wool-Based Textiles in the West European Economy, c.800 - 1500" suggests savings my have been closer to 66.6% on spinning and weaving. With productivity increasing progressively over the period as the technology gradually improves, alongside many other medieval advances in textile production like mechanical fulling.
In the ancient period this work was overwhelming done by women at home, for family use. So it's not surprising if many classical historians skipped the subject as uninteresting. Looking at classical Roman clothing, you can tell they are using much simpler tailoring/cuts vs Renaissance Europe, which results in less fabric wastage. While early modern Europeans often seem to wear many more layers than what you usually see in classical art. I think it's clear that even before the industrial revolution, Europe had seen great technological advances in the textile industry vs the classical period, which I expect allowed for increases in public consumption.