Originally Posted by
oldhat
Yes, whenever I feel I'm getting fed up with modern technology, I have to remind myself that without modern medical care I would be dead or suffering terribly right now. (I tend to think modern medicine is the only unalloyed good part of modern technology, but that's a separate discussion.)
I don't know what social historians say about drinking, but I'd guess that yes, people did drink a lot back then, as the popularity of temperance movements suggests. When you are in pain most of the time, as a lot of people were due to the crude state of medicine, alcohol must have seemed like a good analgesic. Plus there were probably a lot of people self-medicating with alcohol because they were suffering from ailments like depression (I think my own grandfather was one such).
Recently I've read a few articles that say historians are reassessing many of the stereotypes of the "wild west." Two things stand out--first, that notwithstanding the popular image of the cowboy as a square-jawed white guy, many cowboys were in fact black, Indian, and Hispanic. It was not a prestigious occupation. Second, the wild west was evidently not so wild. In most towns, crime was fairly rare--and gun control was very common.
In short, life was indeed tough, but mostly because of poverty, ignorance and disease. My cousin dug up the death certificate of my paternal great grandmother, who died in her 40s. The cause of death was listed as "exhaustion."
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