Maggie's Farm

There is a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about this. Prior to 1900 or so half of a family's children would die before age 18. Most from diseases we now vaccinate for or can treat. Sometimes there would be years or decades where few people died from those deadly disease and then there would be years or decades where many people died from them. A lot of the suppositions about life expectancy prior to 1900 was based on a very small period of time and a small percentage of the population. You might live in Boston and see half the people you know die from small pox and this would skew your view of life expectancy. Or you might live in a different place and never see an epidemic in your lifetime.

History is written by the survivors and many of them did indeed live into their 80's but they forgot their brother or sister who died at age 4 in the bed next to them when they were a child in 1840 or so. My youngest brother died at age 4 in a bed next to me. I was 6, my older brother was 9 and we heard him die from whooping cough. My mother held him and me and my brother cried silently and tried to make it appear we were sleeping. Yes a doctor came, we had family doctors who would come to the house at any hour of the day or night but he couldn't save him. Have you ever heard someone with whooping cough? It haunts me still. The memory haunted me all through my own children's growing up, fear that I would have to go through what my mother and father did. I can still remember how that sounded and it brings tears to my eyes. We had three uncle's and one grandmother die in our home when I was growing up. That's what they did back then, you died at home not in a hospital. Another uncle did die in a hospital in an Iron Lung. My mother took me with her when she visited him and I sat on the floor looking up at this big green barrel shaped thing that was breathing for him quite loudly.

My mother had Polio when she was a little girl but fortunately the only lasting effect was one leg was longer than the other. But my mother was terrified of polio and was so happy when Dr Salk created the vaccine. We kids all got it in school.

We keep better records now. Although different countries use different methods with typically less accurate results. I wouldn't assume all the old data is accurate and more importantly I think that for most healthy people the life expectancy is much greater and the statistics don't really recognize that.