Congrats — you won history’s lottery
We live better than kings and queens of history thanks to the evolution of medicine and science
Like many others you buy lottery tickets and enjoy imagining what you would do if you won. The irony is that you have already won an awesome lottery. If you need a little convincing, come with me on a journey into the past.
The year is 1350 CE and you live in Kent, England, in a feudal society. At the top is the king, the absolute owner of all the counties. Next are the barons, knights and bishops who manage the king’s lands. They live in manors or castles and have horses and carriages. Below them are merchants and tradesmen. Sheriffs collect taxes and keep order. You are a serf at the bottom of this pyramid.
Along with your children, you farm the land and tend the herds. You often work from dawn to dusk, six days a week. You neither read nor write. If you’re a girl you’ll be married by your mid-teens. With your parents and seven siblings, you live in a one-room home with a thatched roof. The walls are insulated with a mixture of mud, straw, clay and dung. There are several windows with wooden shutters (no glass). You sit on wooden stools and benches and sleep on straw mattresses. Your water comes from a nearby stream. There is no indoor plumbing. You have one hot meal a day — a stew of vegetables, herbs, fish or meat. You have a small garden, a few chickens, a pig and maybe a goat.
You worry about surviving the winters particularly when the crops are poor. You worry about death for one out of three children never reaches the age of five. You worry about childbirth for one out of five women die during the delivery or soon after from infections. You worry that your untrained men will be forced to fight for some baron or king. You worry mostly about the plague. With a little luck you might live to be 45.
From jolly old England, you move on to a farm just south of Owen Sound. It is the year 1856. In Ireland you farmed the land of an English lord, and starved when the potato crops failed. Here in Ontario you were granted land — 100 acres of fertile Crown land for $14 provided that you cleared the trees for crops and pasture. It was a back-breaking task cutting down trees with axes, and removing the stubborn stumps. With the wood you built log homes, fences and barns. You work six days a week rising early to milk the cows and feed the stock.
Although the roads are sometimes impassible due to mud or snow, they link you to neighbours and villages. You use horses and stage coaches for transportation. You no longer worry about being hungry. You have your own vegetables, meat, eggs and milk. In the spring you pick wild blueberries and raspberries. The women can several hundred quarts of preserves for the winter months.
Children walk a mile or two to school, but they’re getting eight years of free education. A few even go on to high school. Churches play an important role. You pray that the children will survive childbirth and outbreaks of childhood diseases. You might live into your seventies provided you survive farming accidents, infections and influenza.
To complete your journey from the past to the present, consider some of the amazing people who purchased lottery tickets for you.
One of the first was a brilliant scholar — Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). By his research on light, gravity, astronomy, mechanics and calculus, he initiated a lifeenhancing revolution. Remember these contributors.
• Dr. Robert Koch discovered the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis and cholera.
• Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin to combat bacterial infections.
• Microbiologist Louis Pasteur initiated pasteurization and vaccination.
• Gertrude Elion found drugs to combat leukemia, septicemia and herpes.
• Sir Frederick Banting and Dr. Charles Best created insulin for diabetics.
• Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium (precursors for radiation).
• Drs. Dwight Harken, Charles Bailey, Bill Bigelow, John Gibbons and Christiaan Bernard pioneered cardiac surgery, and surgeons Hugh Owen Thomas, Sir Robert Jones, Sir John Charnley and John Insall pioneered hip and knee replacements.
• Robert Fulton, Karl Benz, George Stevenson and the Wright brothers took us from horses and buggies to travel by ships, cars, trains and airplanes.
• Michael Faraday, Nicola Tesla, Thomas Edison and Alessandro Volta unleashed the power and benefits of electricity.
• Professor and U.S. navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper and mathematical analyst Ada Lovelace were pioneers of computer programming.
• Inventors Alexander Graham Bell (telephones), Martin Cooper (cellphones), and Philo Farnsworth (television) revolutionized communications for the world.
The list goes on and on. Thanks to such men and women you live better lives than kings and queens of past centuries. Incredibly, you live in Canada — citizens of a democratic, pluralistic, inclusive country. As “unarmed Americans with Medicare” you enjoy unprecedented health, wealth, safety and entertainment that our ancestors could never imagine. So congratulations. You won the greatest lottery of all.