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How would you capitalize on today's knowledge if taken back to 1500AD.

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Zebo said:
That's where power is at, that's who will save you for actually being able to read when 99.99% can't, that's who will have to save you from ignorant mobs who see's silver and gold in your white teeth and being a foot taller than everyone.
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You could probably get by saying you were from somewhere far away and be fine with the locals, at least in larger towns. I don't think the Catholic Church would hesitate to cook you if they thought you'd be a thorn in their side in any way. You'd have to either avoid them completely or get in with them completely.
 
darkxshade said:
Not that I know enough about medicine of that time but if there are any "conventional doctors" already, then you're not setting yourself apart. What would you accomplish simply by knowing what not to do because that's only half the solution IMO. So you know not to bleed bad blood... a patient comes to you say with a bad rash of some sort, what do you do? How do you diagnose them? How do you treat them? How do you protect yourself from infection? You may be as clean as you can be but it's not like there were any had latex gloves or clean rooms for you to operate in. Acquiring [anti-bacterial] soap was probably a challenge in of itself.
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Alcohol is pretty easy to find. Just wash your hands in booze, dump it on wounds, clean your tools in it, etc.
 
I'd probably go find a milkmaid and cure smallpox with her, particularly marketing to Spanish sailors. Most likely I'd be burned as a heretic, but there's a small chance I could save tens of millions of lives. I'd take it.
 
Who said you'd have to start in Europe where your identity would be cast in suspicion from the get go and likely getting you killed as a result. Why not start in the new world where Native Americans were far more accomodating of foreigners and trade... that is until we started taking their land and killing them.
 
PingSpike said:
Alcohol is pretty easy to find. Just wash your hands in booze, dump it on wounds, clean your tools in it, etc.
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You're not exactly advancing the field of medicine by being clean. Like I said, it's only half the solution. You still need to know what to do for most cases. Treating wounds is probably one of the only thing you'd be good at and even then you'd have a lot of trouble with the more severe wounds like broken bones.

Even though you're vaccinated now, there's no telling how you'd do there if you came in contact with a patient with small pox or the plague, etc which was the major killer during that era. I certainly wouldn't know what to do or how to help them, would you?
 
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darkxshade said:
Who said you'd have to start in Europe where your identity would be cast in suspicion from the get go and likely getting you killed as a result. Why not start in the new world where Native Americans were far more accomodating of foreigners and trade... that is until we started taking their land and killing them.
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Or the far east (China/Japan).

I don't think the OP specified where you get sent, so that choice could be available.
 
darkxshade said:
You're not exactly advancing the field of medicine by being clean. Like I said, it's only half the solution. You still need to know what to do for most cases. Treating wounds is probably one of the only thing you'd be good at and even then you'd have a lot of trouble with the more severe wounds like broken bones.

Even though you're vaccinated now, there's no telling how you'd do there if you came in contact with a patient with small pox or the plague, etc which was the major killer during that era. I certainly wouldn't know what to do or how to help them, would you?
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Smallpox and plague would both kill you at the same rate as the general population back then (unless you're old enough to have had the smallpox vaccine).
 
Well, dumping alcohol onto battlefield wounds before stitching them up and boiling water should greatly reduce the deaths of soldiers making an army much more effective during that period.

Anyway, I think I would invent and sell toilets. It's been said that modern sanitation has saved more lives than medical science ever did.
 
darkxshade said:
Not that I know enough about medicine of that time but if there are any "conventional doctors" already, then you're not setting yourself apart. What would you accomplish simply by knowing what not to do because that's only half the solution IMO. So you know not to bleed bad blood... a patient comes to you say with a bad rash of some sort, what do you do? How do you diagnose them? How do you treat them? How do you protect yourself from infection? You may be as clean as you can be but it's not like there were any had latex gloves or clean rooms for you to operate in. Acquiring [anti-bacterial] soap was probably a challenge in of itself.
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Hey pal... back off! I've watched ER and House. I'll be fine!

🙂

Seriously though, there are lots of antiseptics available in 1500, like alcohol, which PingSpike pointed out.

I probably would not attempt any kind of operations simply because I wouldn't know what I was doing. But to be a general practitioner type of doctor I think I could pull off in 1500. I think the biggest challenge would be to not divulge anything about germ theory, genetics, etc. or you'd be labeled crazy or, worse, a heretic.
 
crashtestdummy said:
I'd probably go find a milkmaid and cure smallpox with her, particularly marketing to Spanish sailors. Most likely I'd be burned as a heretic, but there's a small chance I could save tens of millions of lives. I'd take it.
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Saving those 10,000,000 in 1500AD would add like 10,000,000,000,000 people to today's world, please don't.

I'd probably just starve to death because no one would listen to me and even the most manliest man of today is a pussy next to some peasant farm woman from 1500AD.
 
child of wonder said:
Hey pal... back off! I've watched ER and House. I'll be fine!

🙂

Seriously though, there are lots of antiseptics available in 1500, like alcohol, which PingSpike pointed out.

I probably would not attempt any kind of operations simply because I wouldn't know what I was doing. But to be a general practitioner type of doctor I think I could pull off in 1500. I think the biggest challenge would be to not divulge anything about germ theory, genetics, etc. or you'd be labeled crazy or, worse, a heretic.
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1500s Mother--Please sir, my son is deathly ill
You-- Well, it's not Lupus!
 
By 1500AD, all of the world's major religions are already firmly entrenched. You'll all be burned at the stake for being witches and/or heretics.
 
DisgruntledVirus said:
You would immediately be outed from your language and dialect. Modern English is vastly different from 1500 AD English.

I would most likely modernize weaponry to the mini-ball (all the tech was available, just not in use). In 1500's firearms were known and used, which means you can't invent them. Bullets (as we know them) wouldn't be easily made due to lack of precision machines (or mechanization to automate it). That would kind of rule out the gatling gun.

I would most likely attempt to work on the steam engine. It's about the only thing that could be done in that time frame with material/tools available, isn't that advanced, and was the start of the industrial revolution which happened ~400 laters.
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Simple rocketry along with electrical generation would be pretty easy with the tools and materials back then. You just need to know what you're doing and find some other smarter individuals for their era and teach them what you know to help you.
 
I would find a corrupt and evil overlord to serve as magister. The key is to team up with somebody who does not care about the nature of the magic in relation to heresy. As magister I could definitely help him with weapon development, refining of steel in particular as well as mechanization through steam engines and belt driven machinery.
 
I don't think the religion thing is going to be to bad. Just softly support whatever is the 'in' with the ruling class at the time. And if things change, change your stance with them. It might be used as a pretext to kill you if you become powerful but they would have just made up another reason anyway so its not like it would change things much.
 
Most of this would undue your existence in the future, time travel would pretty much be limited to observation.
 
TheSlamma said:
Most of this would undue your existence in the future, time travel would pretty much be limited to observation.
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Assuming there's only one time stream and that causality cannot be violated, you're probably right. However, there are other possibilities.
 
edro said:
I think most people realize that. We obviously can't build a computer (or toaster), but we could still use knowledge on a more basic level.
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well i don't think they do, inventions and developments tend to require a series of previous improvements in other areas as well, making the idea viable. so even if you do remember a tidbit, it is unlikely tohave the support to be possible.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4186437927867084105#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNAql5pDydQ&p=5D3CC851E7915616
connections...a good series on this. the ways advances are made possible by other seemingly unrelated advances is pretty interesting.
 
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