Getting old

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. The shorter life expectancy at birth was mostly due to two things:

infant mortality and disease. The infant mortality rate in 1850 was around 20% (one in five infants didn't see their first birthday). Disease was due to lack of medical and other advances we take for granted; people died of smallpox (which killed one of my great-great-great-grandfathers in 1862), tuberculosis (which killed my great-great uncle in 1938), and syphilis in the days before vaccination and antibiotics, and people died of typhoid in the days before clean running water and gravity-flow indoor plumbing. Advances in medical science have made things like strokes, heart attacks and cancer much more survivable as well, which increases overall life expectancy, but even so it wasn't uncommon for people to live into their 70's or '80's.