Most of peoples work these days is pretty specialized, it’s that division-of-labor thing.
Your average man (or woman) from the 1800’s would have a much wider variety of useful skills and knowledge than 98% of the population today.
When I hear people implying that if there was some kind of large scale economic collapse, then we’ll just go back to the 1800’s, I can’t help but chuckle.
We won’t go back to the 1800’s, we’ll be lucky if we go back to the 8’s!!!
My father gave me an old book on medicine for humans and farm animals from the beginning of the 20th century. You could go to a town and the pharmacist would dispense to you all kinds of narcotics for your use if needed. No doctors and your farm was 50 miles from town. My grandmother, born in the late 1800’s could fix anything and most medicines were growing flowers or weeds that was used along with bark from certain tree’s...dad died in 1988 and his generation passing left us without a lot of nature medicines. Most of todays medicines are man made from those same plants my grandma used to use.... Dad once said his mother cured his brother of allergies by feeding him a special hemlock tea. There are several types of hemlock. Most poison. Dad had many allergies but they didn’t show up until he was an adult...gave me a recipes for a great salve that used creosote. The Rexall drug store was all out of creosote and wasn’t going to order any more as it was seldom sold anymore. That was when drug stores were really drug stores and not like the one’s today...