I think we are talking past each other. I am NOT talking against the virtue of working hard all day, sweating and earning your labor the manual way. In fact, it does help you burn fat, which the modern man certainly needs.
What I am trying to get across is that the life before modern comforts, including modern medicine and hygiene practices, was hell (by modern standard). You cannot have bygone era peasant walk a modern hallway and not have the entire building evacuated for foul smell, dripping dirt, and untreated pathogens like smallpox, TB, and plague.
“You cannot have bygone era peasant walk a modern hallway and not have the entire building evacuated for foul smell, dripping dirt, and untreated pathogens like smallpox, TB, and plague.”
Peasants from some places maybe yes. Settlements with such sanitary conditions were very short lived though.
But for all cultures that survived a long time, regular bathing was a mandatory practice and even somewhat of a religion. Entirely without any modern technology.
Soap and tooth “paste” were being used long before people started writing down history. By peasants AND nobility. Legend says natural soap was discovered and used by prehistoric people along riverbanks long ago.
Even my grandparents lived half their lives without electricity, plumbing, gas and modern medicine. They didn’t see cars or planes until much later in life. They told me first hand what life was like and it wasn’t “hell”. Just different. Instead of working at an office or factory, you worked the same hours on your land and home. The only “hell” they experienced was when the commies and Nazis came along.
If you subtract the insane politics/wars of old times, life without modern conveniences wasn’t “hell” outside the cities.