How badly did people age before modern medicine and technology

Factual Questions
1

In this thread there is a discussion about life expectancy before medicine.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=16956930#post16956930

But for the vast majority of human history life has consisted of malnutrition, lack of medical knowledge and devices, poverty, backbreaking labor, exposure to the elements, etc. So I’m wondering about healthspan (as opposed to lifespan or life expectancy) before modern medicine and all our labor saving devices, ergonomics, technology, etc. How much pain and disability exists in pre-industrial civilizations (preferably agricultural as opposed to hunter gatherer for purposes of this discussion since agricultural probably had more micronutrient malnutrition and hard labor, but I’d be interested in both).

So how badly did people age in civilization 300+ years ago when people had to perform harsh labor, had poor nutrition, were constantly exposed to the elements, had no medicine, etc? Were most people pretty much disabled and in chronic pain by their 40s?

2

The big reason for the low life span 300 years ago was that so many died in childhood. I would think that harsh labor and exposure to the elements would toughen people up–that it the modern sedentary lifestyle which has negative effects on health.

3

Steady labor “toughens” people only up to a point, after which it starts to break them down. Keep in mind, too, that in the past there were no joint-repair surgeries, no anti-inflammatories, and so forth.

Pre-modern era, the skeletons of common people reveal lives of hard and unremitting labor, with accumulating damage to joints and points. The types of labor engaged in left their mark on skeletons.

Sure, a sedentary lifestyle has a negative side, but so does a lot of physical labor.

But, slightly more directly to the OP’s question:

Way in the past, the skin of the common people aged pretty quickly because they spent a lot of time in the sun without protection. It was the aristocracy/royalty who could either get out of the sun, or purchase parasols, or whatever and they generally looked better in adulthood, although there were exceptions. A king who was outside a lot would wrinkle up just as much as a peasant.

Again, only the wealthy would have access to anything much like gentle soaps or moisturizers which contribute to the relatively youthful appearance of people today. The poor might use olive oil or some sort of tallow-based ointment, but fat was needed for a lot of other things in life so supplies were limited at best.

Hair dye was largely unused by most people - again, the exceptions being the wealthy.

Scars not only from injuries but also from serious infections that had to run their course without modern medical treatment and various diseases were pretty common for everyone. That didn’t help, either.

Nutrition problems no doubt contributed to aging as well. For much of history, even royalty could wind up with scurvy after a bad winter.

Injuries didn’t heal as well - if you broke a bone worse that a hairline fracture good luck getting it set. Injure a joint you were probably screwed not just because they didn’t have surgeries for such things but also because they didn’t have our rehab programs, either. Walking sticks weren’t just fashionable, for a lot of middle-aged people they were necessity.

Dental care sort of sucked, too - losing teeth started relatively early in life, and discolored/rotting teeth were pretty common. Which could lead to problems with eating a good diet.

Basically, there was nothing to ameliorate normal deterioration. For myself, a person pushing 50 in the early 21st century, I get regular dental care, adequate nutrition all year round, was vaccinated as an infant against scarring diseases like smallpox, wash with mild soaps, have cheap and effective moisturizers and sunscreens, medical care for the skin problems I’ve had, the joint injuries I’ve suffered, and I don’t have to labor to the point of degrading my body in order to survive. As a result, if you put my picture next to someone of similar age from 50 or 100 or even 150 years ago I look younger than they do.

Pre-1800 someone 40 years old typically had grey hair in part or in whole, was missing teeth, probably had some significant scarring, sun-damaged skin, and probably some chronic injury in the hands, feet, elbows, knees, wrists, or ankles due to overwork. The wealthier folks maybe a bit less so, but the vast majority showed their years.

4

As an anecdote, here’s a world-famous before/after shot, about age 12 and 30. She looks to me to have aged way more than 18 years in those 18 years. I’m assuming her access to quote/unquote modern medicine and technology would have been limited.

5

As you hinted to, maximum human lifespan hasn’t changed much at all since humans were invented. I have a Life magazine photo spread with my great-great grandfather in it. He was born a very poor child in 1848 and died in 1949. The reason they gave honored him with a photo spread was that he was one of the few remaining Civil War soldiers (Confederate in his case). I also have a picture of him celebrating his 100th birthday. He got a flask of whiskey and a cigar for it and he was standing up and completely coherent at that time.

His grandson is my grandfather. He sounds exactly like a 50 year old man who is perpetually stuck in 1962 on the phone. I fully expect him to last well over 100 years old. My daughters were shocked that they still have a living great grandparent that they were going to meet last year until I told them that they were also going to see his older sisters that are 94 and 98 respectively with only mild signs of decline.

I know the SDMB hates anecdotes and for good reason but it does illustrate a point. There was never a point in time where there weren’t people that lived into their 80’s or even over 100. You have to look at the mortality curve because the mean and median are completely misleading. The longer you live, the chances grow much greater that you will live much longer.

The average (mean) of death used to be really low because of infant and childhood mortality. There was never a time that people fell apart and died in their 40’s through internal causes. It was always because of disease, malnutrition, famine or war. The human body has been able to survive 70+ years and beyond throughout all of human history unless external causes wiped most people out statistically well before that age. Even still, you always see a few outliers that lived to an extremely old age (100 and beyond) even in the most primitive societies.

6

There is another huge factor in this too and it has nothing to do with health or longevity. If you look at older pictures, people simply stopped caring much about appearance or fashion after about 35. I can show you examples of people that were 40 at the time the pictures were taken and yet they appear to be about 55 - 60. The concept of adopting newer styles of clothing or even hairstyles were foreign to them. Ubiquitous smoking did not help matters at all either.

I am 40 now and I don’t feel that old. However, in the small town I grew up in, people of my age now were already settling down into the stretch-waistband, get your hair set at the hair dresser once a week mindset even that young when I was growing up. That has nothing to do with overall health except for the smoking but it will make you look much older than you really are.

7

Yes but before we had all these labor saving devices, ergonomics, medical interventions, protection from the elements, etc. how did people both look and act after a life of malnutrition, hard labor, no medical care, and things like that.

Even if a person lived to be 70, in historical times did people just assume after the age of 30 you were going to start having chronic pain, by the mid 50s you were pretty much assumed to be disabled for all but the easiest labor?

8

My grandmother was born and raised in a Russian “shtetl” (like in Fiddler on the Roof), and lived a fairly difficult life. I have a photo of her holding me when I was a baby. Her face is totally filled with wrinkles, looking to be at least in her 80s by today’s standard. But based on my age at the time, she was only about 65. I’m 68 now, and there’s no comparison. In fact, my mother, who lived to be 92, didn’t look anywhere near that old.

9

There are plenty of places that lack access to modern medical technology today. In my experience, people do appear to age faster-- lots of time in the sun, lots of childbirth and nursing, and very few resources to spend on things like cosmetics, shapely clothing, and beauty treatments. Add to that the effects of injuries and chronic illnesses, and you are likely to end up showing some wear and tear. While the hard work may keep you in shape, the diets of poor farmers are often high in simple carbs, which can lead to a doughy, bloated look. That said, first-worlders often look pretty gnarly without makeup, bras, good shaves, etc., so it’s hard to really compare.

Teeth are a mixed bag. With a low-sugar diet, a lot of people keep an enviously healthy set of teeth. But if you have any kind of alignment issues or dental disease, the entire mouth can go spectacularly bad.

10

Taking the question literally, sanitation and nutrition have had a bigger effect than medicine.

With better medicine, more people with what used to be fatal illnesses survive, often with medical complications. Sure, a number of illnesses that are debilitating but not fatal are now treatable or curable, but my guess is that’s the minority.

In his interesting book “1491”, Charles Mann cites the earliest descriptions of American aborigines by Europeans, with the few extant descriptions of Europeans by the aborigines of the same time. (Forgive me for using a technically correct, if unpopular term.) The Americans were tall, strong, stately, and healthy. The Europeans were small, foul-smelling, not pleasant to look at, and unhealthy.

The Americans had better nutrition and didn’t live in crowded conditions with animals, avoiding giving rise to many infectious diseases. Unlike the Euros, they didn’t live where they soiled; they moved on, and they bathed.

The popular impression is that the development of large-scale agriculture was a step forward in progress. From a technical standpoint, it was, but from the standpoint of quality of life, it wasn’t. It lead to disease and bad nutrition. It allowed the development of non-working classes such as rulers and standing armies. If it was worse, why did it dominate? (1) It supported a higher population density, and (2) it allowed those standing armies. No doubt there are other reasons too.

Skin health is the obvious counterexample. The more time you spend in the sun, the faster your skin ages, and it’s especially true the less melanin you have, and the less evenly distributed it is. Technology allows us to stay out of the sun, so we get a benefit there. (Sarcasm intended. :wink: )

11

I second the remarks about sun exposure. the sun ages your skin-I have seen young people in brazil, who work outdoors. By age 30, most of them look like 60. The 'healthy tan"look is dangerous-not only does it age your skin, it causes skin cancer.

12

I find it astonishing when I look at a picture of a fifty year old woman from 1963 compared to one today. The woman photographed in 1963 will almost always look significantly older than a woman of that age in 2013. Sometimes enough so that she looks to be a generation older than her future counterpart. I suppose smoking must be a factor, but I am always surprised when I see pictures of my older aunts who were in their late 40’s / early 50’s when I was a toddler. They look as if they were ready for retirement and not a day younger than 65.
My fiancee is in her late 40’s and she genuinely doesn’t look more than her late 30’s. I am sure that some of this is “love’s prism” but even so, I know what I see. Quantifiably fewer wrinkles and much better skin tone.
And that is only 50 years. Extend the trend back 300 years and I wouldn’t be surprised to see women in their 30’s after several childbirths and scant resources to look like a woman in her 50’s does now. In fact, I’d be quite surprised if she didn’t look like she had been “ridden hard and put away wet” by 35. And yet, she would most likely live (if she survived her child-birthing years) to 70 or 80 years of age.

You don’t see many real crone-types around anymore. Apparently, Oil of Olay does work. Would would have thought?

:wink:

13

Assuming nothing dangerous happened to you, you could age similar to the way people age today, and expect to live into your 60s or 70s. However, throughout history, most people generally did not live past their late 30s or early 40s, but this is due to deaths from diseases that are controllable today, childbirth, and high infant and childhood mortality.

This should explain:

14

I think that perhaps you are putting too much weight upon malnutrition as a factor. People who lived on farms, or worked in agriculture even as share croppers or serfs still had access to a varied and reasonably healthy diet.

Hard labor took it’s toll, but that is where the extended family multi-generation group came in. The younger generation did not move away from home to leave the old folks at home, they became the new owners and caretakers of the old.

Genes were and still are the best indicator of health in old age. It’s a cold universe and a cold world that we live in. Some people are living into middle or old age and dealing with health issues who would not have survived as long in previous generations. But others are still living to a ripe old age with little health care intervention at all.

My grandparents on my father’s side were married in 1896 and raised 13 kids on a farm in Arkansas. When I was 10 and visited them they were normal 90 year olds who still got around just fine on a farm with a well and no running water. Of course, several of my aunts still lived in the area, hence the extended family care thing. Great granddad live until he was 96 years old and died in the field and was found when he didn’t show up for dinner one day.

During the same trip when I was 10, I met my maternal great-grandmother. Mom’s side of the family could best be described as ‘dirt poor’, yet great grandma was over 105 years old, no one knew exactly what her birthday was. She could not talk and her hands and feet were curled by arthritis, but she was also quite alert and being tended to by relatives.

People lived long lives if they had family and a place. Diseases take a toll when people are migrating or otherwise forced into close proximity to strangers. Wars and other political upheavals would kill off the weak and elderly.

15

There are still lots of places in the world where people live as subsistence farmers scratching a living out of the dirt just like in Ye Olde Days. Head to Afghanistan or Guatemala or Mali or Cambodia and see what the people there look like.

16

I’m in my fifties do a bit of manual labour, my bodies hurting now because I’ve had a week off, it doesn’t follow that you will be necessarily be crippled by arthritis as you get older, many people cure themselves by taking up sport or going to the gym, I’m mean " cured" as pain free rather than medically cured.

17

Nitpick- Broomstick said that people didn’t dye their hair. Hair dye has always been popular, from the mummy of Ramesses III of Egypt on up. Henna, indigo, chamomile, and sometimes really nasty stuff (Renaissance Italians were crazy) but hair dye has happened nigh unto forever.
Also, I’m pretty sure that even Europeans cleaned their teeth. I know Arabs and Indians did, well back into history

18

before modern medicine the mortality rate was 100%.

19

I posted awhile back on the medieval English diet. I’m no dietitian, but their diet seems reasonably healthy to me: lots of grains, vegetables, seafood, some fruit, wild game, etc. They would have suffered in times of famine, but famine wasn’t the inevitable fate of every medieval peasant; many would’ve grown up eating quite well.

20

I can’t find a cite, but I once found that in 1940 the average life expectancy was about 40 years. Average could be mean, median, or mode. But consider…

  1. Wars
  2. Women dying in childbirth
  3. Babies who were stillborn etc.
  4. People dying from what is today routine (burst appendix etc.). Things that antibiotics today could maybe fix…?
    Etc.

I think our ancestors froze their asses off and/or starved.