Daily Life in the Old Regime339people did not know that bacteria caused their intense
toothaches. Medical wisdom held that the pain came
from a worm that bored into teeth. Anton van
Leeuwenhoek, the Dutch naturalist who invented the
microscope, had seen bacteria in dental tartar in the
late seventeenth century, and Pierre Fauchard, a French
physician considered the founder of modern dentistry,
had denounced the worm theory, but their science did
not persuade their colleagues. For brave urban dwellers,
barber-surgeons offered the painful process of extrac-
tion. A simple, but excruciating, method involved in-
serting a whole peppercorn into a large cavity; the
pepper expanded until the tooth shattered, facilitating
extraction. More often, dental surgeons gripped the
unanesthetized patient’s head with their knees and
used tongs to shake the tooth loose. Whether or
not one faced such dreadful pain, dental disease left
most people with only a partial set of teeth by their
forties.
The Life Cycle: Birth
Consideration of the basic conditions of life provides a
fundamental perspective on any period of the past. So-
cial historians also use another set of perspectives to ex-
amine the history of daily life: an examination of the
life cycle from birth to old age (see table 18.4). Few ex-
periences better illustrate the perils of the Old Regime
than the process of entering it. Pregnancy and birth
were extremely dangerous for mother and child. Mal-
nutrition and poor prenatal care caused a high rate of
miscarriages, stillbirths, and deformities. Childbirth was
still an experience without anesthesia or antisepsis. The
greatest menace to the mother was puerperal fever
(child-bed fever), an acute infection of the genital tract
resulting from the absence of aseptic methods. This dis-
ease swept Europe, particularly the few “laying-in” hos-
pitals for women. An epidemic of puerperal fever in
1773 was so severe that folk memories in northern Italy
recalled that not a single pregnant woman survived.
Common diseases, such as rickets (from vitamin defi-
ciency), made deliveries difficult and caused bone de-
formities in babies. No adequate treatment was
available for hemorrhaging, which could cause death
by bleeding or slower death by gangrene. Few ways ex-
isted to lower the risks of difficult deliveries. Surgical
birth by a cesarean section gave the mother one chance
in a thousand of surviving. Attempts to deliver a babyLife cycle characteristic Sweden, 1778–82 United States (1990 census)
Annual birthrate 34.5 per 1,000 population 15.6 per 1,000 population
Infant mortality (age 0–1) 211.6 deaths per 1,000 live births 9.2 deaths per 1,000 live births
Life expectancy at birth
Male 36 years 71.8 years
Female 39 years 78.8 years
Life expectancy at age 1
Male 44 years longer (45 total years) 72.3 years longer (73.3 total)
Female 46 years longer (47 total years) 78.9 years longer (79.9 total)
Life expectancy at age 50
Male 19 years longer (69 total years) 26.7 years longer (76.7 total)
Female 20 years longer (70 total years) 31.6 years longer (81.6 total)
Population distribution ages 0–14 31.9% ages 0–19 28.9%
ages 15–64 63.2% ages 20–64 58.7%
ages 65+ 4.9% ages 65+ 12.5%
Annual death rate 25.9 deaths per 1,000 population 8.5 deaths per 1,000 population
Source: Swedish data from Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution(New York, N.Y.: Norton, 1976), pp. 286–87; U.S. data from The World Almanac
and Book of Fact, 1995(Mahwah, N.J.: World Almanac Book, 1994), p. 957; and Information Please Almanac, Atlas, and Yearbook 1994(Boston, Mass.:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1993), pp. 829, 848, 850–52.TABLE 18.4A Comparison of Life Cycles