I'm sorry if this is the wrong subreddit, /r/askscience didn't seem quite right, and /r/answers said no medical questions.
I've gotten all the standard vaccines. I'm in decent shape. I've never had a serious disease, just common colds, chicken pox and shingles, and other childhood stuff. I have had many inner ear infections, and abscess wisdom teeth. I've also had three children, one of whom was an emergency c-section (umbilical cord began to fail, baby was in distress).
So, my question is, would the average, healthy person today, have survived to middle age 500 years ago? Or would things like minor infections that we treat easily today have killed them? What about pregnancy and birth? 500 years ago, my daughter born via c-section wouldn't have survived, but I'm not so sure about me.
Yes and no. The c-section probably would have killed you. Although, [there are stories] (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/01/health/he-esoterica1) of survival from a c-section going back to the 15th century. Women didn't start to survive with any regularity though until the 19th Century.
One of the things that always gets my eye twitching is when people state that the average lifespan was something relatively young today (like 36) and so they would be dead by now. Average means average. Ie, there were a LOT of people that died before they were 5 and a lot of people easily made it into their 70's and 80's. If half the population dies before 5 and the other half makes it to their 70's, you have an average lifespan somewhere in the 30's. Basically, if you survived childhood, you had a good bet of surviving into old age.