Tbh milkmaids were the prettiest women because they would get mild cases of cowpox instead of skin wrecking smallpox and it was the origin of the smallpox vaccine (vacca means cow in latin).
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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And they had to be clean, so washed daily, and were always inside, in a very clean environment.
You are a milkmaid?
Edit: My joke was based on a corrected typo, "we're". IDGAF about online typos unless they have a humorous aspect. Cheers!
Huh I didnβt know humans could get mild cowpox
A great many pathogens can be "weakened" with various processes, heat is one, but also the surviving strains in a living being that beat the disease via immunity may also carry weakened strains and this is where we learned to deliberately contract smallpox via poking someone's skin pustule and poking ourselves with that pus.
Gross but highly effective. This is how George Washington inoculated his army. (Which of course he learned about through a Reverend in Boston who learned about it from his slave, Onesimus, which makes sense as smallpox was ravaging Africa for over 10,000 years, they figured it out eventually.)
Thank you so much for sharing this interesting information.
Yes, itβs super interesting. The reason the word βvaccineβ derives from the Latin βvaccaβ (cow) was because we observed that people who contracted the cowpox gained some protection from smallpox. We investigated that connection, did a bunch of testing and research (which included early scientists infecting themselves on purpose in some rather gross ways), and developed the theory of vaccines.
The history of early modern medicine is very cool.
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they're both drunk, though. so that's more than normal.
Alcohol would be considerably safer to drink than most water you could find
And it was way tamer than what we commonly drink now.
It was similar to Table Beer, iirc.
for consumption by children and by servants.
I don't know what's wrong with your toddler, he has barely touched his lager.
This is largely a myth. It would only apply to large cities, and then, the fresh water sources were frequently protected by law in cities.
Alcohol itself doesn't actually destroy the pathogens in question- booze was made by microbes, after all, and as for bacterial... only beer and liquors was boiled, and simply adding it to already-contaminated water wouldn't make it safer; since that only happens at much higher concentrations of alchohol than you'd find, even in liquors. It does inhibit bacterial growth, though, usually people were mixing booze into water to make things taste better. (Similar to how modern restaurants will frequently add lemon slices to cover the taste of tap water.)
in terms of maintaining hydration, alcohol- even weak alcohols- are very much not good for that, even 3% alcohols, particularly in high-heat or under activity.
Boiling water was discussed in Roman and Greek writings well before the medieval period, as well- mostly in the context of making it not taste funky; and usually they were talking about filtering it to remove contaminants (for example, near mining operations.)
Again, streams rivers flowing were generally safe for consumption and would only become unsafe as a result from urban pollution, of which, there were controls in place to protect at least some water ways and wells.
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Do medieval shows only hire conventionally unattractive men? I always thought the convention was to have attractive people play important parts or "good" characters, regardless of gender, but admittedly I don't really watch many medieval shows.
Witcher?
Game did a good job of having the ugliest polish man with a pitchfork in the town...
Then the local alchemist has a dump truck ass with eyeliner on.
If you're talking about my girl Keira Metz, she's a witch, not a standard alchemist. Woman definitely engages in performance enhancing magic
Had to look up. Got alchemist and herbalist confused.
It was tomira. I did remember the ass lol
I looked her name up on google and half the images are indeed about said dump truck lol
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I think the canon is that pretty much all witches do
*Attractive evil villain enters scene*
"...they're gonna get a tragic backstory and sacrifice themselves for some noble cause."
*3 seasons later*
"Oh goddamit."
When your entire idea of middle ages comes from people funking around marginalia creatures this is what happens. But the middle ages were an early-capitalistic moment with more dynamism than you're told. Even under feudalism people must have had personal interocurses, private and economical. Imagine the scams of the time.
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This is what bothered me slightly in the Witcher games.
I don't agree with you there are really attractive male characters in the witcher.
Yeah but all boobs on anyone (maybe apart from Ciri) were the exact same every time. Massive and perfectly round.
It was the Conjunction of the Spheres!
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This is a trope in all middle ages media I've seen. I've been watching someone play KCD2, and it's not as bad... but still there and jarring.
The only place where I can think of where it seems more fair is, ironically, some animation? Barring anime's sexism... problems, there's less incentive for that, heh. I liked Avatar's peasants:
Help! Help! We're being repressed!
But that's because Avatar was good and stuff! I like the peasants though. They all seem at like the same level of dress and stuff! Look at that (Earth Kingdom?) people in the first picture! That's real nice!
It's Bolin/Mako's Lower Ring family! And, clockwise, Jang Hui fishing folks and Republic City homeless.
Folks like this (along with some notably badass women) are the bread and butter of the shows, though. I don't ever remember hitching to think 'huh that farmer lady looks like a skimpy model'
i donβt get it
The comic highlights the differences in the portrayal of women and men in media, often oversexualizing women in any number of contexts.
A medieval maid milking the cows would probably not have looked (or smelled) like a supermodel.
Nor perfectly shaved armpits. That's definitely a target here
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Female character during a time where only royals could afford cleanliness and health: is fit, healthy, and conventionally attractive
Male character during the same time: fuckin filthy, feeble, and gross
Afaik that's a myth. People of all classes, always washed themselves and tried their best not to smell. Especially in the middle ages where it was widely believed that bad smells transmit disease.
It may vary from region to region, I once visited the Museum of Soap and History of Dirt in Bydgoszcz, Poland (wonderful experience!) and it was all au contraire to what you just said
And everytime I heard historians scratching that topic, they would always confirm this information. So historically not much hygiene in Eastern Europe, I suppose.
"The past" ^TM is a big place and a lot of very different things happend in a lot of different places at different times.
The same way it is true that "In the past people believed that fat was super unhealthy and suger was super healthy" and at the same time "in the past people believed that fat was super healthy and suger was super unhealthy".
Both statements are correct for different times and regions.
But trying your best as a medieval peasant versus as a medieval noble would have significantly differing results
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The girl's shirt in the first panel is my favorite part of this comic.
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Milkmaids famously shaved their armpits after lathering them with double cream.
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