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libraryofbabellast Sunday at 5:02 PM0 repliesview on HN

I agree on all counts except for irregular bathing among elites, which was more varied with cultures in the past: largely true in early modern Europe, but the upper classes in Imperial Rome bathed pretty much daily and probably didn’t smell too bad.

To the list I would add: a group of horrible diseases (smallpox above all, which killed about a billion people throughout history) that vaccines largely pushed to the margins, at least until recently.