Diarrhea was, apparently, a common cause of death about 100 years ago or so. How? I ate some bad food, and my poop stopped being solid, and now *I’m going to die?!?*
I ate some really, really delicious General Tso’s Chicken yesterday from a local restaurant. Hours later, well, I think you can do the math. The after-effects are still hitting me today. Annoying, sure, but if this were 100 years ago, apparently my current state means I need to whip out my fountain pen and start writing letters to my beloveds, telling them to please take care of my poor cow Bessie, such a good little lady over all these years, please give her the love she deserves as I slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God. Either that, or, I could just drink a bit of water and eat some incredibly inoffensive food like bread (wasn’t everyone basically eating bread and little else back then anyway) and regain my health?
Can someone explain?
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You lose a lot of water when you have diarrhea. If you can’t replenish fluids with a lot of safe, clean water then it can become fatal.
In many cases the diarrhea was caused by the water they were drinking. Losing all the water while pooping it out and replacing it with more bad water created a cycle which would lead to dehydration and death.
I’m a time when dirty was the norm, clean drinking water was water that was “clear”
Imagine you have the same general Tsos that gives you the tummy twisters, and instead of heavily filtered/treated water, you instead quench your thirst with the water running down the rain gutter outside.
Diarrhea still kills a lot of kids in developing countries. It’s mostly due to dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. Oral Rehydration Solution has saved a lot of lives. But they didn’t have that knowledge back then.
today there are simple things to help and we know alot more
if you went to a doctor back then they where a quack and sold snake oil.
today it is very different.
The issue wasn’t just hydration and “food”, there are significant nutrients that must also be replenished. Electrolytes aren’t going to be recovered by choking down a crust of bread and it isn’t like they can grab a bottle of Gatorade back then. If you poop all your potassium out then your heart will stop.
Diarrhea is currently the second leading cause of death in children younger than 5 years of age globally, killing 525 000 children every year. In 2019 around 1.5 million people died from diarrheal diseases. That was more than all violent deaths combined.
Diseases are carried in water in poor neighbourhoods and countries, which lead to diarrhea and dehydration, which leads to drinking more infected water and eventually death, which leads to more disease infection in the water other people drink and so on.
You’re just lucky to live in a country where diarrhea is a bit of a joke.
If you keep pooping nonstop for days and are unable to keep down enough fluids to rehydrate yourself, you can go purchase an anti-diarrheal like Imodium to stop the pooping, or go to the doctor and get IV fluids. People who lived a long time ago didn’t have either of those options. They just had to hope they stopped pooping before they got too dehydrated.
You’ve got mild food poisoning with a diarrhea for half a day.
If you’ve got, say, cholera you’ll be in the same state for a week and then you may die.
You cannot loose too much water in a day no matter how severe your illness is; but you may in a week.
The problem is that even if you have access to water your organism does not get enough liquid from your guts – it goes right through you.
Only in the middle of 20th century doctors found right cocktail of water, salts and sugar (rehydration solution, google it) that works effectively and supplies enough water to keep patient safe.
TL;DR: the problem was in long-term diarrhea caused by various diseases. Nobody knew how to satisfy thirst of the patient effectively.
People weren’t getting diarrhea from spicy food. They were getting it from contaminated water. If your only available water source is contaminated just drinking more isn’t going to help you. Unless your immune system can fight off the infection you’ll die.
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