The glorified nightmare of the 19th century
We often look back at the victorian era as a peculiar time. Most things looked beautiful, the clothing was perfection, and there were so many inventions that it was hard to keep up.
But digging a bit deeper, it’s incredible that so many humans survived the time. (To be fair, many didn’t…)
Syphilis was rampant, there was little to no medicine, and it turns out that it has been overly glorified in modern day solely because of the aesthetics.
The morbid unboxing : pre-Youtube edition
Have you ever wondered why there were so many important egyptian figures back in the day but so little mummies left ?
Well, wonder no more.
The victorian era was… insane ? Yeah I’m gonna go with insane.
From having parties where they would unroll the mummies like christmas gifts for morbid voyeurism, to grinding them up and eating them like paracetamol, they decimated thousands of years of history in just a few centuries.
The forbidden Jerky
Apothicaries used to sell mummies’ flesh to cure stomach aches, all the while painters used embalming fluid and flesh to make some of their masterpieces. And I know you’re wondering, so here’s the answer : yes.
They did try to just plain eat them.
The dissecation was done with salt, so they basically ate old human jerky for fun.
Cannibalism, but in a fancy corset.
But that’s just the beginning, it’s the creepiest, but not the dumbest thing they did.
The white death
There were sooooo many children deaths back then. Back at a time where milk would sour really quickly, and money was hard to earn.
So the population were looking for any means necessary to keep it fresh for longer for the younger ones… That’s when they decided to use Borax.
The milk would stay the same for days at a time… Do you know Borax ? It is now used as a household cleaner or a pesticide. Sooooo you see where I’m going with this, right ? That’s right, it wasn’t enough. They also had to get rid of the smell, and for that, there was formaldehyde.
They were poisonning entire families with it. To keep the milk from turning.
Same with the bread. Not with Borax though, but to make it whiter, they used chalk and alum, therefore poisoning the customers in the process. The browner bread would be left behind, they would all prefer the whiter « flour » version. And die.
Speaking of white… it’s a good time to mention the make-up.
Somewhere between the invention of the chainsaw for childbirth and arsenic in the green dye of the dresses, they decided that white meant beauty for women. That’s when a nice little powder became all the rage to whiten your skin, to make you look ill basically. Think of it as ozempic before it was ever a thing.
Care to guess what was in that beauty powder ?
Take your pick ! It either contained lead, arsenic, mercury or ammonia.
Just imagine the shedding it caused, in a time where antibiotics were possibly snorting a grinded up mummy. But hey, we’re talking about people who would willingly eat live tapeworms to lose weight so yeah.
Ah the victorian era. Fun times.
Diarrhea isn’t the only explosive thing
I also would like to talk about the hygiene -or lack thereof- but I have a sensitive stomach.
So instead I do want to mention, with the utmost respect- quite possibly the dumbest way to die back then.
I get that they didn’t know how things work, and that we have to be grateful to them for inventing them in the first place, but the first toilets came with a huge design flaw.
Think riding space mountain without a safety harness.
They would create the septic tank, the tube, the room to defecate in, but no evacuation system. The bacteria and the poop would add up, creating a gas that had only one way out, the toilet.
That was latched closed to avoid the foul smells. Of course.
But the methane would build up and… explode. So many deaths while using the restrooms. Such useless shame.
Survival of the fittest ?
The average lifespan was about 40 years old back then. I don’t know how they reached that age when the entire universe was after them, but those who reached it deserved a postmortem medal.
Maybe the egyptian embalming fluid helped in the end.
Natural preservatives.