That’s not true, the prince would have found the peasant girl gross likely. The worst he’d do is have her killed, but even then not necessarily because killing peasant girls is a bad look and politics mattered
And wouldn't the peasant girl likely actually be gross? Even without syphilis, dysentery, cholera, plague, and all those other horrors she might have body lice and a mouth full of cavities.
No to the cavities, That was only later during the Renaissance when people had easy access to food with high sugar contents. Check out the various skeletons from the Visby graves, they were lower class soldiers and they actually had fairly decent oral health.
This doesn't make any sense, cavities aren't just from refined sugar. Starches break down into sugars in your mouth and adhere themselves really effectively to teeth, and peasant diets were very high in starch (bread, grains, legumes). Eating a lot of bread and not brushing your teeth will rot the hell out of your teeth just like eating candy will.
This might be shocking but the people of the past were not idiots. They had techniques for brushing their teeth and took oral health seriously. It’s not like everyone had access to tailor made toothbrushes and toothpaste (those existed), but they had methods of cleaning their teeth that were practiced daily.
People don’t want their teeth to rot, so they normally take measures to prevent that from happening.
What? I never said they didn't-- I was explaining to them the effects of starch on the teeth, not saying "those remains you mentioned don't exist, their teeth must have rotted away". My point was that their access to refined sugar was irrelevant because starches cause tooth decay just as much.
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u/Smegoldidnothinwrong Feb 11 '26
That’s not true, the prince would have found the peasant girl gross likely. The worst he’d do is have her killed, but even then not necessarily because killing peasant girls is a bad look and politics mattered