Streets and alleys were open sewers.
The astonishing growth in prosperity is one of the greatest events ever.
The enrichment of the last centuries is the hockey stick of human prosperity
One in four kids would die before the age of 5.
They made a lot of their own clothing.
They built their own dwellings.
There were no toilets.
Smallpox was eradicated in 1977.
We grow to be four inches taller than we were just 250 ago.
Everything was infested with insects and rodents.
Today we expect to live to be about eighty.
Life expectancy was around thirty years.
Most of our ancestors lived in huts with dirt floors and thatched roofs.
They grew most of their own food.
Our ancestors ate gruel
The filth was horrible and often toxic.
They wore the same home-made underwear over and over.
Today it is more like 1 in 200.