An Old Science book from 1650

[Minimalist]

You know what though, I sometimes like to look at history with the idea that humans haven't changed that much.

But their thinking has.

This quote from Frederick the Great is amusing....

If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army.

but probably false.  In the 1750's it was just one more way to die and at least you got paid and didn't have to work in the fields.  Those wounded in battle stood an excellent chance of dying from infection but the same was true of some farmer who got his foot run over by a wagon.  As Abs said, death was a constant presence.  I always found this chart to be instructive.



Between infant mortality, death in child birth, plagues and infections the basic life expectancy hardly changed throughout the millennia...until very recently when science developed anti-biotics and sanitation and germ theory.

In the 20th century people started to think that they did not have to die of the first bug that came along.