Today in Sasha's history.
Author: Sasha
This article was originally written by Sasha and is not allowed to be reproduced by any media
Why did the ancients live to be 50 years old and suffer from all kinds of diseases? July 30, 1972: The female corpse of the Mawangdui Han Tomb was unearthed.
In ancient times, life was not good, and they were generally sick at the age of forty or fifty.
Many people don't understand why the ancients called the seventy-year-old an ancient man, that is, an old man who has been rare throughout the ages.
In 2020, the average life expectancy of Chinese is 77.7 years, which means that everyone can live beyond the age of 70.
What's even more exaggerated is that it is estimated that by 2035, the probability of the average life expectancy in the mainland exceeding 80 years is as high as 93%, of which the life expectancy of women is 85.1 years and that of men is 78.1 years.
So, what is 70 years old?
It's true.
In 1949, the average life expectancy on the mainland was only 35 years.
If there were factors such as war in 1949, there would have been no war in 1960, when the life expectancy of the Chinese population at birth was only 43.7 years.
Without further ado, let's take a look at Mrs. Xin Chai in the Mawangdui Han Tomb.
Mrs. Xin Chai is the wife of Li Cang, the prime minister of Changsha State.
Her husband Li Cang is not a small role, in the second year of Emperor Hui of the Han Dynasty (193 BC), he was officially named the Marquis of Yu, with 700 households.
Li Cang is not only a high title, but also a high position. Changsha was a vassal feudal state of the Western Han Dynasty, which existed for more than 200 years.
Wu Rui, the king of Changsha, was the king of Hengshan who was on an equal footing with Liu Bang.
When Liu Bang officially canonized Wu Rui as the king of Changsha, Changsha was very large, with two counties of Changsha and Yuzhang and three counties of Xiang County, Guilin and Nanhai owned by Zhao Tuo, with a total of 5 counties. You must know that in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, there were more than 60 counties, and there were 5 in Changsha.
In Changsha State, in addition to the King of Changsha, it is Prime Minister Licang who has the highest status and can be called a hegemonic minister.
After the death of Li Cang, he and the son of Lady Xin Chai inherited the title of marquis.
In other words, Mrs. Xin Chai was a top nobleman of the Han Dynasty, an authentic marquise.
According to the marriage and love tradition at that time, Mrs. Xin Chai must have been born in a famous family and had a high status.
So, how is Mrs. Xin Chai doing?
It's not good, when she was 50 years old, she was riddled with all kinds of diseases, and finally died violently.
Mrs. Xinchai's body was excellently preserved, and doctors performed an autopsy.
Mrs. Xin Chai suffered from many diseases during her lifetime, including coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis, and multiple gallstone disease; whipworm eggs, pinworm eggs, schistosomiasis eggs found in the rectum and liver; generalized osteoporosis; calcified tuberculosis lesions in the left upper lung; old fracture of the left forearm; Narrowing of the fourth lumbar spine.
According to pathological inference, Mrs. Xin Chai's violent death may have been caused by a coronary heart disease attack caused by biliary colic.
Mrs. Xin Chai suffers from these diseases, which are quite serious.
During the pathological autopsy, the doctor removed a stone as large as a broad bean in the common bile duct and a stone the size of a soybean at the confluence of the liver duct.
These two stones alone made Mrs. Xin Chai suffer for many years.
What's worse is that Mrs. Xin Chai also has severe coronary heart disease and atherosclerosis.
The main symptom of coronary heart disease is angina. As soon as it is said that Xi Shi, one of the four beauties, has coronary heart disease, and covers his chest all day long and shouts pain.
Modern medical experts analyzed the cause of Mrs. Xin Chai's death and believed that it was roughly as follows: after Mrs. Xin Chai ate a meal, she greedily ate a lot of fresh melons and fruits (a large number of melon seeds were found in the gastrointestinal tract), which caused a sudden attack of gallstones and great pain. The severe pain caused problems in the fragile heart, which was already suffering from coronary heart disease, and severe angina pectoris, followed by acute myocardial infarction. Due to insufficient blood supply to the heart, Mrs. Xin Chai died violently in a short time.
In addition to these fatal serious diseases, there are many other ailments in Mrs. Xinchai.
One is that she had tuberculosis, also known as tuberculosis, an incurable disease in ancient times.
In ancient times, ordinary people died of tuberculosis, and there was no cure, that is, the ancient saying "ten tuberculosis and nine deaths".
Not to mention ancient times, until the founding of New China in 1949, there were still 27 million tuberculosis patients in the country, and more than 1.38 million people died of tuberculosis every year.
In Lu Xun's novel "Medicine", the owners of the teahouse, Mr. and Mrs. Hua Lao, treated this incurable disease for their son Xiao Zhu, and did not hesitate to make home remedies to buy human blood steamed buns.
Fortunately, Mrs. Xin Chai was very lucky, and she survived tuberculosis after suffering from tuberculosis, which can be regarded as a walk through the ghost gate.
The second is that she still has a lot of parasites on her.
Anything else is good to say, schistosomiasis eggs are not trivial.
This means that Mrs. Xinchai has been suffering from schistosomiasis for a long time.
Schistosomiasis is a serious infectious disease that has afflicted China for thousands of years, a kind of ancient plague, and also the plague god in Mao Zedong's "Seven Laws and Two Songs· Sending the Plague God".
The main reason for the crushing defeat of Cao's army in the Battle of Chibi was that a large number of soldiers fell ill with plague. In fact, the soldiers of Cao Jun suffered from schistosomiasis. From ancient times to the present, the Yangtze River is full of schistosomiasis, and almost everyone in the Cao army soldiers got sick after they came into contact with the river water. Because most of the soldiers were northerners, they had never suffered from this disease, and once they attacked, it was very serious, and there were a large number of deaths. Even if they are lucky enough not to die, their physical health will be greatly affected and they will lose their combat effectiveness.
For ordinary people like Mrs. Xinchai, schistosomiasis is a chronic disease that destroys the human body, and can often last for ten or twenty years, with repeated attacks.
The specific symptoms are fever, abnormal diarrhea, hepatosplenomegaly, cough and so on.
Schistosomiasis can continue to damage human health, especially the liver, intestines, appendix, etc., greatly reducing the life expectancy of people.
In addition to schistosomiasis, trichuriasis, pinworm and other diseases of the digestive system can cause chronic diseases of the digestive system, such as inflammation and anemia that are difficult to cure for a long time.
In conclusion, these parasites can greatly reduce lifespan.
However, whether schistosomiasis or other parasitic diseases, it was difficult to avoid in ancient times.
Mrs. Xin Chai lives in the Changsha region, where rivers and lakes are full of schistosomiasis larvae.
As long as humans come into contact with this water, it only takes 10 seconds for the larvae to infect the human body, which is really difficult to prevent.
And living in a water town, it is almost impossible to avoid contact with schistosomiasis water.
In addition, other parasitic diseases are mainly caused by unclean drinking water. Many diseases of the ancients were caused by unclean drinking water!
Water that looks clear may not be free of parasite eggs. Most of the parasite eggs are so small and translucent that today they can only be viewed with a microscope and are not visible to the naked eye at all.
As the Marquise Lady, Mrs. Xin Chai naturally has a very high standard of drinking water, but unfortunately the very clear well water and stream water cannot avoid these insect eggs.
In 1908, with the completion and operation of Beijing's first waterworks, the Dongzhimen Water Plant, China had its own waterworks for the first time, which were built by foreigners before.
Tap water is characterized by sterilization and is relatively safe.
However, until the liberation of Beiping in 1949, there was still only one water plant in Dongzhimen, and the water supply penetration rate in urban areas was only 30.41%, and the suburbs and rural areas were even more zero.
In other words, even in 1949, less than one-third of the city's residents in Beiping, China's largest metropolis, had access to clean running water.
In addition, the ancients drank cold water, and drinking boiled water was a matter for many years after the founding of New China.
The ancient Chinese did not have the habit of drinking hot water, because of waste firewood and waste of manpower, boiling hot water was basically used to make tea.
Therefore, drinking cold water will inevitably lead to parasitic diseases, which were also incurable in those days.
In addition, Mrs. Xin Chai also has generalized osteoporosis, which is a geriatric disease that only people over 65 years old can suffer.
So, why did 50-year-old Mrs. Xin Chai get sick?
This is mainly due to the fact that the usual dietary intake of calcium is too low.
Why? The ancient Chinese, especially those of the Han Dynasty, basically did not consume dairy products.
The diet of the people of the Han Dynasty was relatively light, and the basic aristocratic women were often the staple food of rice and noodles with some vegetables, as well as a small amount of meat, and there were no dairy products. Milk and dairy products were not on the table until the Tang Dynasty, and they were still exclusively enjoyed by princes and nobles.
Here is a joke: The allusion of "Yihe Crisp" comes from "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", which is about someone giving Cao Cao a box of crisps, and Cao Cao saw it, so he picked up the pen and wrote the three words "Yihe Crisp" on the desk. When Yang Xiu saw it, he picked up the spoon, scooped a spoonful, put it in his mouth and ate it. The person next to him was shocked and said, this is the crisp that people gave to the prime minister, how can you scoop it up and eat it? Yang Xiu smiled and said, didn't the prime minister write very clearly? He wrote "one person has a bite to eat". The prime minister gave an order, how can we not eat? So everyone ate the crisp in one bite. Cao Cao came out and saw it, and asked whose idea it was? Everyone said it was Yang Xiu's. Cao Cao didn't say anything, and went in silently.
"Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is a work of the Ming Dynasty, and it is not written accurately. There is a similar record in the novel "Shishuo Xinyu" of the Southern Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago.
The article "Yang Xiu Eats Cheese" writes like this: People pay Wei Wu a cup of cheese, Wei Wu eats a little, and the word "He" is inscribed on the hijab to show the public. There is no solution. When he went to Yang Xiu, he repaired his sip and said: "The Catholic people can take a sip, why doubt it?"
The translation is: someone paid tribute to Emperor Cao Cao of Wei Wu for a cup of cheese, Cao Cao drank a little, and wrote the word "He" on the lid of the cup for everyone to see, and no one could understand the reason for writing this word. When it was Yang Xiu's turn, he took a sip and said, "The lord asked each of us to eat a bite, what is there to doubt?"
Obviously, this is not a box of puff pastry, but a box of cheese. This cheese is cheese, or cheese-like dairy product, and only one person can take a bite.
A small piece of cheese was actually paid tribute to Cao Cao, which shows that the Han nobles usually don't eat this kind of thing at all, which is a rare thing.
Throughout the Han Dynasty, both commoners and nobles did not consume dairy products.
Why? The main thing is that there is no such tradition and there are no conditions for the manufacture of dairy products.
Before the Northern and Southern Dynasties, China was a standard agrarian people, not related to nomadic peoples. The Han people raised a small number of livestock for farming, not for dairy products like nomads.
It was not until the Northern and Southern Dynasties that northern China was occupied by the nomadic Hu people, and the custom of eating milk gradually spread to China. Even so, breastfeeding is still a relatively rare thing. After Yongjia crossed to the south, Wang Dao, the leader of the Nandu Shi clan, invited Lu Yu, the leader of the Jiangdong Shi clan, to eat and served out the precious cheese. Who knew that after eating cheese and going home, Lu Wan's body actually had problems, and he could only write to Director Wang to laugh at himself, "Although the servants are Wu people, they are almost ghosts." It can be seen that at that time, the southerners were not used to eating dairy products.
Shen Yue of Southern Liang was a native of Wuxing Wukang (now Huzhou, Zhejiang), and he did not feel unwell after eating the "North Crisp" given by others, and also wrote a letter "Xie Situ Gives North Crisp Qi", praising this food as "not from the divine power, Mo or light", which was regarded as representing the upper class of southern society at that time, giving dairy products a positive evaluation.
There is so much, Mrs. Xin Chai has been suffering from osteoporosis at the age of 50 due to insufficient calcium intake since childhood, and I am afraid that a few years later, she will have a serious fracture if she falls casually.
In short, Mrs. Xin Chai had so many chronic diseases at the age of 50 and suffered from the pain of the illness for 20 years, and finally died violently. As a top aristocratic woman in the Han Dynasty, Mrs. Xin Chai was still so sick, and others could see it.
Then again, Mrs. Xin Chai is not short-lived.
Her son, Lifeng, who was buried nearby, died at the age of 30.
And Mrs. Xinchai's husband, Li Cang, died 20 years ago, when he was only 46 years old.
Due to the low level of medical care in ancient times, the ancients often only lived to be thirty or forty years old, even if they were able to live to adulthood. Mrs. Xin Chai lived to be 50 years old like this, and she was an old lady of that era.
If the Han Dynasty is old, let's look at the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, which is not far from today.
Qianlong had a total of 27 children in his life, including 17 sons and 10 daughters.
However, only 10 of the 17 sons made it to adulthood, and 6 sons did not live past the age of three.
Even if the princes live to adulthood, many of them are short-lived, such as the eldest son Yonghuang only lived to be 23 years old, and the third son Yongzhang only lived to be 25 years old.
The average age of the 10 princes who lived to adulthood was only 44 years old.
You must know that these princes can be said to be the group with the best living conditions and the best medical resources in China, and they can only live to be in their 40s.
Don't yearn to travel to ancient times to be an uncle, you may die of illness at the age of thirty or forty.
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