Recent comments in /f/history

sfcnmone t1_izu7hcl wrote

Reply to comment by Skyblacker in A question on the history of perineal stitches after giving birth by Endorion

Oh well yes I’ve done “some” stitching and yes it is absolutely an art. In fact, deciding whether to put any stitches at all into shallow tears is an art. Midwives tend not to sew shallow tears (1st degree) as long as they aren’t bleeding, because the stitches are often much more uncomfortable than unsutured “skid marks“. Not to say that vulval tears are particularly pleasant no matter what!

This doesn’t really work well for deeper tears, where the muscle or small sphincter are torn. That’s really the point of OP’s question.

My observation, from delivering a couple of thousand babies, is that first time teenagers almost never have deep tears, and first time 35 year olds almost always have tears, and so probably there were fewer tears hundreds of years ago.

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TeacherAdorable4864 t1_izu7bly wrote

Reply to comment by MeatballDom in Egypt: Portraits of Egyptian Mummies Discovered in Ancient Philadelphia by IslandChillin

It means Ancient Egypt was colonized by Mediterranean cultures but was most influenced in its earliest days and founded on African + Near East cultures. Cleopatra and her family (as depicted similarly to these images) are not Ancient Egyptians. They are Ancient Greeks in Egypt. Hence the art work.

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eeveeyeee t1_izu6o6a wrote

Reply to comment by TrustedAdult in A question on the history of perineal stitches after giving birth by Endorion

> But how will your words sound to somebody who has their surgery next week and is really nervous?

For what it's worth, I understood what they meant. Not necessarily the particulars but I knew that they meant under full supervision, after years of rigorous teaching and with very minor and routine procedures.

If you're never given the opportunity to practice, you'll never learn. I'd rather trainee doctors practice during their placements rather than only ever observe and then be thrown in the deep end when they qualify.

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MeatballDom t1_izu636x wrote

Reply to comment by sygnathid in Egypt: Portraits of Egyptian Mummies Discovered in Ancient Philadelphia by IslandChillin

The Ptolemaic Period is still very much considered ancient. Yes, Egyptian history goes back much further, but modern history goes ahead much longer. It was recognised during the time that the history was already so old though. There's the famous tidbit about Cleopatra (VII) living closer to the age of computers than the building of the Great Pyramid, which is true, but she still died (and effectively ended the Ptolemaic dynasty) ~2,050 years ago which was a time very much considered ancient.

Also considering the importance of the Ptolemies in Greek and Roman history, they are brought within those timeframes as well. The Ptolemies pre-date the Roman Empire and their downfall is part of the empire's rise.

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TeacherAdorable4864 t1_izu5c6m wrote

Reply to comment by Bentresh in Egypt: Portraits of Egyptian Mummies Discovered in Ancient Philadelphia by IslandChillin

I qualified it with “most likely” but regardless my point remains - these images shouldn’t be seen as representations of indigenous Egyptian people or indigenous Egyptian culture. This is the result of colonial invasion by the Ptolemaic Dynasty/Alexander. It’s important to name that because there’s a long history of trying to make Egypt an extension of the Mediterranean without attaching the history behind it.

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Bentresh t1_izu4xsm wrote

Reply to comment by TeacherAdorable4864 in Egypt: Portraits of Egyptian Mummies Discovered in Ancient Philadelphia by IslandChillin

Not necessarily. Many Egyptians, especially members of the elite, chose to represent themselves in a Greek or hybrid Greco-Egyptian style. As Lorelei Corcoran noted in Portrait Mummies from Roman Egypt,

>It is futile to classify the subjects of the portraits in ethnic groups, as "Romans," "Greeks," or "Egyptians." For their part, "Romans" seem only to have made up one percent of the population of Roman Egypt (Steenken 1987, p. 14), certainly not enough to justify the numbers and geographic diversity of portrait burials. The ethnic or racial distinctions between "Greeks" and "Hellenized Egyptians" appear, moreover, by this period to have blurred (Shore 1972, p. 17). The patrons of the portrait mummies can be characterized as members of the wealthy sector of society of Roman Egypt that was at the time ethnically diverse, but culturally homogeneous, maintaining a strong indigenous tradition that critically "absorbed, modified and rejected foreign influences" (Ritner 1986, p. 243). The reassignment of the portrait mummies to the Egyptian sphere, however, raises an important question, "Where and how were those 'Greek and Roman' settlers in Roman Egypt buried?" Some must have become assimilated to this sector of society. The persistence of native burial customs might have been partially due to the intermarriage of foreign men with native Egyptian women who transmitted the traditions to their children (Pomeroy 1984, pp. 122-23). Other foreigners were either shipped home or buried (or cremated) in Egypt according to their own native fu- nerary traditions.

People of Greek descent made up a relatively small percentage of the population even in the Greco-Roman period.

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