The emperor, a "profession" that everyone envies, once the king is in the world, he has supreme power, enjoys endless wealth and a luxurious and noble life, but, according to statistics, among the more than 400 emperors in the feudal era, the average life expectancy is only 39.2 years.
As early as the pre-Qin era where Confucius lived, "life is rare for 70 years" has become a very common phenomenon, but why did the emperors of the previous dynasties who had the highest power, the best quality conditions, and the most abundant resources have an average life expectancy much shorter than ordinary people? There are seven reasons for this.
Excessive indulgence
As the saying goes: a knife on the head of the color word! Most of the emperors in ancient times took the initiative to hang such a knife above their heads by using the power in their hands.
Bai Juyi wrote in "Song of Long Hatred": There are 3,000 beauties in the harem, and 3,000 are favored in one. Indeed, in feudal society, as hereditary emperors, they regarded the continuation of the bloodline as the top priority of the royal family, so a large number of unmarried girls were recruited into the palace and became the production tools of the emperors.
It is said that after Emperor Sima Yan of the Jin Dynasty destroyed the state of Wu, he recruited 5,000 stunning women from the south of the Yangtze River into the palace, and in order to treat the "difficulty in choosing", he sat on a sheep cart and roamed around freely in the palace where these concubines lived.
This "sheep cart luck" only allowed him to live to be fifty-four years old.
Another overindulgent is Zhu Houzhao of Ming Wuzong, the emperor who regarded "play" as his life's work, once built a "leopard house" for himself, and widely recruited beauties from all over the country to send them here for his amusement, but just an accidental overboard incident made his life forever fixed at the age of thirty.
is so indulgent, the iron body can't bear it, so that a small wind chill can take the life of the noble emperor's Qingqing!
Take pills
Once the emperors have supreme power, they want to extend the term of their power indefinitely. The reign of Qin Shi Huang is a typical example.
After Ying Zheng pacified the Six Kingdoms and ruled the world, he built a luxurious mausoleum for himself while making himself immortal, and it was under the domination of such an ambivalence that he did many stupid and absurd things.
He was once deceived by the monk Xu Fu and sent him to the so-called immortal mountain overseas to seek the elixir of life, but Xu Fu and the five hundred boys and girls never returned to let him receive a great deception, and in a fit of anger, he burned all the books of immortality in the world and buried all the monks in the world alive, which is the famous "book burning and Confucianism" incident.
But after the book was burned and the people were buried, Yingzheng's long-cherished wish for immortality became stronger. The consequence of taking a large amount of pills is that a large amount of mercury in the pills is retained in the body, which eventually leads to mercury poisoning.
Therefore, Qin Shi Huang, who had been seeking immortality all his life, only lived to be fifty-one years old before he died, and after his death, he was accompanied by the traitor Zhao Gao with a cart of stinky salted fish, which formed a huge irony with his hope of immortality and eternal glory!
Coincidentally, 1,700 years after the death of the first emperor, a Ming emperor named Zhu Houxi followed in his footsteps and filled his body with pills.
Consanguineous marriage
In order to maintain the purity and nobility of their bloodline, members of the royal family generally only marry within their own family, so it is very common for cousins to marry cousins and aunts to marry nephews.
Modern medicine has shown that such consanguineous marriages can lead to a greatly increased probability of sudden illness and birth defects, which can lead to the premature death of most members of the royal family, including previous emperors.
lifestyle
Different from modern times, due to the general lack of health knowledge in ancient times, many emperors were extremely unscientific in both diet and daily life.
Even royalty doesn't know the importance of a balanced intake of nutrition, and in their eyes, being able to indulge in alcohol and meat is a status symbol!
Therefore, they often eat big fish, so that cholesterol will inevitably increase, causing the probability of coronary heart disease and high blood pressure in modern medicine to increase rapidly, so many emperors have died young.
Died in an accident
After all, under the great temptation of the Ninth Five-Year Supreme and the power of the world, some people did not hesitate to personally cut off the lives of their siblings by killing for the throne.
The "Rebellion of the Eight Kings" in the Jin Dynasty, the "Rebellion of the Seven Kings" in the Han Dynasty, the "Xuanwumen Change" in the Tang Dynasty, and the "Jingyan Change" in the Ming Dynasty are all like this.
According to statistics, among the emperors of the past dynasties, there were as many as 61 unnatural deaths due to murder or accidents, accounting for almost one-seventh of the total, such as Yang Guang, the Yang Emperor of the Sui Dynasty who died in Yu Wenhua and his hands, and Zhu Youzhen, the Emperor of Ming Chongzhen, who hanged himself on the coal mountain because of the ruin of the country.
Therefore, under the shadow of the sword and sword, the emperors in the whirlpool of struggle are worried every day about whether someone has rebelled, for which they can leave behind their flesh and blood, they can become cold and lonely, and even become a real "lonely person"!
Under this strong psychological pressure, their health has also been greatly damaged, which in turn leads to a short life!
Medical conditions
In ancient times, unlike in modern times, medical conditions were extremely limited, resulting in many diseases that seem ordinary now, but at that time they were terminal illnesses that were certain to die. For example: smallpox! Emperor Aixin Jueluo Fulin of the Qing Dynasty and Emperor Aixin Jueluo Zaichun of Tongzhi both died of this disease. Among them, Shunji was twenty-three years old, while Jaechun was only nineteen years old.
In addition, in the face of the emperors who were high above, the imperial doctors in the palace were punished for fear of misdiagnosis, and generally adopted conservative treatment, which led to many diseases that could have been cured, and the imperial doctors gave up treatment under the huge psychological pressure of the imperial doctors, resulting in the emperor's short life.
For example, Cao Cao's headache could have been cured by the miracle doctor Hua Tuo through surgery, but due to the limitations of his thoughts, Cao Cao mistakenly thought that Hua Tuo was going to hurt his life and refused treatment, so he chose to have a split headache rather than a craniotomy, so Cao Cao, a generation of heroes, only lived to be sixty-five years old.
Work pressure
As the king of a country, the affairs of the whole country are complicated, and for some emperors who are one-minded, this is undoubtedly a high-intensity work that consumes a lot of energy, and the typical representative of this is the Yongzheng Emperor mentioned above.
In addition to taking pills to consume his body, Yongzheng is also the most diligent of the emperors of the past dynasties, according to records, he generally only rests for three or four hours a day, and a lot of time is used by him to correct and deal with government affairs, inhibiting him to suffer from serious lung disease, in the last moments of his life, coughing up phlegm and saliva every day, there is a lot of blood.
But Yongzheng used his diligence to successfully resolve the financial crisis left by his father, and what was handed over to his son Qianlong was a Qing Dynasty with a rich country and a strong people! But he allowed his life to be fixed on October 18, 1735, when he was only fifty-eight years old!