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The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

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Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#51

Post by bartonfink »

scarby2 wrote: post #40
closewith wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have diarrhoea a lot today, in developed countries with stable access to clean water and food. If anything, people massively underestimate the amount of diarrhoea premodern living involved.

>People have diarrhoea a lot today, in developed countries with stable access to clean water and food My personal experience suggests it's pretty uncommon. Maybe once every few years, and I eat all sorts of questionable things.

Your personal experience must invalidate large parts of the diarrhea filled lives many others before you have lived and died. Thanks for chiming in, wise one.

Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#52

Post by cardanome »

legitster wrote: post #3

I feel like some of these debunkings need debunking! I don't think anyone is truly arguing that medieval people never drank water. But they did drink beer in quantities that would be untenable today. The author is also muddling points - medieval people didn't have to understand microbiology to know that beer was safer to drink. And it was! Not only would the brewer have access to better water, it would be boiled as p…

> Yes, people drank water. But (especially in urban settings) they drank A LOT of low abv drinks.

The vast majority of people in the medieval period did NOT live in cities.

Furthermore the cities that did exists where way less densely populated and would more look like bigger villages to the modern eye.

It is the modern world with it's industrialization and high population density that has the problem of getting safe fresh water. People have images of Victorian London in their head not realizing that is way, way past the medieval era and way into our modern era.

The vast majority of people in the medieval period had access to safe drinking water. They also probably met most of their hydration needs from directly consuming safe water sources. While it was common to brew your own beer and people did so a lot, I think the economics required for everyone to be able to consume multiple liters of beer every day would have been a bit too much.

As for did medieval people prefer drinking beer when given the choice? Many people today would rather drink soft-drinks or a beer even when having access to perfectly safe tab water. So I agree that might be more plausible.

Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#53

Post by [deleted] »

cardanome wrote: post #52
legitster wrote: post #3

I feel like some of these debunkings need debunking! I don't think anyone is truly arguing that medieval people never drank water. But they did drink beer in quantities that would be untenable today. The author is also muddling points - medieval people didn't have to understand microbiology to know that beer was safer to drink. And it was! Not only would the brewer have access to better water, it would be boiled as p…

> Yes, people drank water. But (especially in urban settings) they drank A LOT of low abv drinks. The vast majority of people in the medieval period did NOT live in cities. Furthermore the cities that did exists where way less densely populated and would more look like bigger villages to the modern eye. It is the modern world with it's industrialization and high population density that has the problem of getting safe…

[deleted]

Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#54

Post by rrr_oh_man »

vram22 wrote: post #48
frereubu wrote: post #28

This is a great podcast about how Victorian London built a huge sewer system to deal with the vast amount of human waste generated by one of the biggest cities in the world: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gjcm I was reminded of it by the mention of people who collected the waste from cess pits, which is also in the podcast - it was transported outside the city and used for fertiliser.

Only partly related (London), but reminds of that striking image called Gin Lane, by Hogarth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane

Bourbon street, 10pm vs 2:30am

Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#55

Post by sdwr »

legitster wrote: post #3

I feel like some of these debunkings need debunking! I don't think anyone is truly arguing that medieval people never drank water. But they did drink beer in quantities that would be untenable today. The author is also muddling points - medieval people didn't have to understand microbiology to know that beer was safer to drink. And it was! Not only would the brewer have access to better water, it would be boiled as p…

Well, I must be a 19th century mill worker, because you're making me want cheap, low ABV cider provided on tap by my employer

Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#56

Post by cardanome »

larsga wrote: post #29

This article is right, but also misleading. Yes, people did drink water. But they preferred to drink beer, and basically they drank beer for thirst if they could. And they did this not just in the Middle Ages, but into the 20th century. I wrote [a blog post]( https://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/433.html ) that goes into this in more detail.

Your blog posts doesn't discuss the medieval era at all though. You are strictly talking about modernity.

The medieval period ends around 1500 AD. A time where the vast majority of people lived in small villages. This is when population density was very low and the industrialization hasn't happened yet. Cholera is a modern problem. Water pollution is a mostly modern problem.

So yes, you are right that water safety was an huge issues in the modern era (end still is is in many regions of the world). Not sure about always preferring beer as I haven't looked deeper at the evidence but it is hell more plausible than for the medieval period.

Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#57

Post by jfengel »

legitster wrote: post #3

I feel like some of these debunkings need debunking! I don't think anyone is truly arguing that medieval people never drank water. But they did drink beer in quantities that would be untenable today. The author is also muddling points - medieval people didn't have to understand microbiology to know that beer was safer to drink. And it was! Not only would the brewer have access to better water, it would be boiled as p…

An additional advantage:

- It had calories

That was the original purpose. It's a way of preserving grain. Food was a constant struggle for most, and they required every single scrap that they could lay their hands on.

Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#58

Post by schmidt_fifty »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #30
deepsun wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in all of those places you'd usually noted how bad is the taste of water, so many people knew it's unsafe not just from tradition, but also from the bad taste. The difference between now and medieval England is that we know taste is not everything, that even "sweet water" can be dangerous unboiled.

> And in all of those places you'd usually noted how bad is the taste of water, so many people knew it's unsafe not just from tradition, but also from the bad taste. Considering the strength of the Chinese taboo on cold water, I find that fairly unlikely.

My understanding is this is rooted in the perception of hot water as a luxury—it's not like we have any shortage of evidence from chinese texts that people have always drank cold water. The idea that most people even could avoid cold water is an artifact of the last two centuries. Even where boiling water was necessary water was boiled and stored (that's not specific to my knowledge of China, that's just an observation from multiple different places and times).

Of course I'm open to be demonstrated wrong.

Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#59

Post by schmidt_fifty »

scarby2 wrote: post #40
closewith wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have diarrhoea a lot today, in developed countries with stable access to clean water and food. If anything, people massively underestimate the amount of diarrhoea premodern living involved.

>People have diarrhoea a lot today, in developed countries with stable access to clean water and food My personal experience suggests it's pretty uncommon. Maybe once every few years, and I eat all sorts of questionable things.

[dead]

Re: The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)

#60

Post by schmidt_fifty »

fransje26 wrote: post #50
closewith wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

179 million acute cases pa in the US [ https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/28/11/22-0247_article ]. Probably an order of magnitude more unreported cases.

>> But if everybody lives in a well-established traditional way (quoted from card_zero's comment) > 179 million acute cases pa in the US I don't think the US diet qualifies..

[dead]
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