# Stop saying people prior to the 20th century died at 40 **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 24, 2009, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449 "2009-05-24T07:46:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/21 "2009-05-24T22:46:12Z")
> [@Quintas](#): > > Why won’t this misconception die?? I hope this isn’t too much of a hijack, but I’d just like to say this. For once, I’d like for people to point out a misconception in a way that isn’t insulting or full of exasperation. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/22 "2009-05-24T22:46:24Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > When they’re talking about advances in public health, I always think of vaccines. Don’t forget sewers and running clean water. Lack of these things is what causes that enormous toll of diarrhea on third world children today. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/23 "2009-05-24T23:40:16Z")
> [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > Interestingly (?) enough the same article says: > > \*The most common cause of infant mortality worldwide has traditionally been dehydration from diarrhea. \* Diarrhea is the mechanism by which many infectious diseases (cholera, dysentery, etc.) kill. For an infant, even a small loss of fluid can quickly turn critical. In areas with poor sanitation it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, as waste enters the food and water supply and infects other. Poor sanitation is caused by a mix of ignorance and poor infrastructure. For many people, the practices they have used for thousands of years suddenly become deadly when population density increases. Shitting in a field is fine when you are the only house around for miles. It’s not cool when hundreds of people are doing it in a city. Any public health effort in these areas is a mixture of education (importance of washing hands, how to make oral rehydration salts, how to deal with waste, how to purify water) and infrastructure (building latrines, sewers, safe water supplies, etc.) ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/24 "2009-05-25T00:41:33Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > It’s interesting to me how modern parents have the incredible luxury of believing that it’s “normal” for their children to outlive them, and are so shocked and sort of “extra” wounded when a child dies. Of course it would be mean and iunnecessary, but I always kinda want to say “Yeah, well, welcome to the experience of pretty much every parent who ever lived prior to about 1900. You counted yourselves damn fortunate if you only lost one, versus every other one, or all!” I seem to recall a history teacher saying that in Colonial America, the odds of a child living to six was about half and the odds of a woman surving childbirth was about half. But 75% mortality for children in England? Dayum! My parents have always felt that way. They lost one out of eleven. I’ve never understood it myself—but it makes a lot more sense for the mother, I suppose. She probably feels the emotional bond of carrying it for nine months. Calling birth a miracle (strip the religious connotation away if you like) is spot on, but like putting men in space it can seem routine until… > [@KarlGrenze](#): > > When they’re talking about advances in public health, I always think of vaccines. A doctor in my paper was quoted as saying that the biggest advance he’d seen in medicine was the advent of antibiotics. He was WWII era and I’m sure the number of casualties that it saved was tremendous. OTOH he would have also witnessed polio victims and the subsequent vaccines. I don’t know. Powerful prevention and cure—vaccine and antibiotic—are definitely formidable. > [@even\_sven](#): > > Diarrhea is the mechanism by which many infectious diseases (cholera, dysentery, etc.) kill. For an infant, even a small loss of fluid can quickly turn critical. In areas with poor sanitation it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, as waste enters the food and water supply and infects other. > > Poor sanitation is caused by a mix of ignorance and poor infrastructure. For many people, the practices they have used for thousands of years suddenly become deadly when population density increases. Shitting in a field is fine when you are the only house around for miles. It’s not cool when hundreds of people are doing it in a city. Any public health effort in these areas is a mixture of education (importance of washing hands, how to make oral rehydration salts, how to deal with waste, how to purify water) and infrastructure (building latrines, sewers, safe water supplies, etc.) Right, I wasn’t shocked by it. Taking Africa, if you round up some possibilities… Stillbirths, spontaneous abortions Childbirth complications Insects carrying things like malaria, sleeping sickness, whatever Animals like snakes, crocodiles, tigers\*, pigs\*\*, etc. Blood carrying things like AIDS from mother to child Famine and natural disasters Chronic malnutrition Childhood diseases Epidemics Accidents Inorganic toxins in the water (maybe heavy metals) Civil wars, blood diamond trade, etc. (sometimes as collateral damage) Children themselves forced to fight in wars …well, it’s interesting to know which is the leader. Mathematically it rings true that it would be something like diarrhea because it’s probably a common symptom of a lot of things, a single mechanism from multiple causes. It’s interesting to me how these things cut across cultures. African famine, sure; Bangladesh had one too. For that matter, the Irish had their potato famine. Even in the US we had our “year without a summer” in 1816 and the Dust Bowl. I imagine parts of the world are still trying to recover from Katrina. \*My ex is from India; she said in the rural areas, they had to keep the fires burning so the tigers didn’t wander into the encampment to snatch the small and weak. Periodically, as preventive maintenance, the men went out hunting tigers…with sticks :eek: \*\*A woman I know told me she remembered going to a funeral for a little girl who fell into a pig pen and they buried “what was left of her.” We’ve always been the hunter as well as the hunted. ---
**Author:** ![Sofis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Sofis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofis)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/25 "2009-05-25T00:49:58Z")
> [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > I seem to recall a history teacher saying that in Colonial America … the odds of a woman surving childbirth was about half. That’s certainly not true. If, in any group of people, the odds of surviving childbirth were that bad, said group of people would cease existing very quickly. ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/26 "2009-05-25T01:20:03Z")
> [@Sofis](#): > > That’s certainly not true. If, in any group of people, the odds of surviving childbirth were that bad, said group of people would cease existing very quickly. I should have phrased that better. I think the idea was that while the odds of dying during a given childbirth were small, the fact that people had larger families meant multiple rolls of the dice. So if the odds of dying were 5%, that’s not bad. But if women are having ten kids, a lot more would die. I.e. half the women would survive their childbearing years. ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/27 "2009-05-25T01:32:36Z")
> [@Quintas](#): > > This thing that is constantly repeated drives me nuts. > > I just wanted to put this thread here, possibly the wrong board. This statement gets repeated in every time travel thread and generally ANY thread dealing with life prior to the 20th century. _Average_ life expectancy was low because of a high number of people who died in infancy or early childhood. People who reached adulthood **were not** dropping dead of old age at 39 or 40. > > Why won’t this misconception die?? Why not ask “Why won’t people get smart???” 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/28 "2009-05-25T02:32:56Z")
Browsing my family tree, it appears most of my great grandfathers prior to the 19th century died in their early to mid sixties. In my mother’s branch, Edward Wilton died in 1711 at 43, but his father John lived until 1725, when he was 85. The typical pattern is born, marry, have roughly six children, lose roughly two in childhood, die aged 62-65. Often a first wife is lost young, generally in childbirth, and a second and sometimes third wife come along within a couple of years of the previous. My family is 100% peasant back as far as the records go, which is roughly 1450 for Mum’s Cornish ancestors, and 1650 Dad’s ancestors in Yorkshire. ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/29 "2009-05-25T11:28:32Z")
> [@Cazzle](#): > > Often a first wife is lost young, generally in childbirth, and a second and sometimes third wife come along within a couple of years of the previous. \…peasant… Right, this was the other thing in the back of my mind. When I was in high school we were forced to read some early Colonial lit. Deadly dull stuff. IIRC not much was written except diaries. The upshot: _Well we got attacked by Indians today, and we’re freezing. Had tripe for dinner. More tomorrow._ Riveting stuff. If life expectancy is low the age of marriage will correspond. I.e. if you expect to live to 40, better get married at 13 so you can have time to raise your kids. Various cultures have coming of age rites in early- to mid-teen years that seems to reflect that. Bar mitzvah/bat mitzvah, quinceanera, confirmation/catechism…the conclusion I’ve drawn: “My child is an adult now,” i.e. marriageable, ready to reproduce. IANAD but I’ve always assumed childbirth is more dangerous for younger girls, who aren’t fully formed themselves. In poorer cultures, girls are likely to marry very young and that would drive up the maternal mortality. ETA: It would also seem to mean more babies with birth defects and preemies, who wouldn’t survive without modern technology. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/30 "2009-05-25T12:35:12Z")
> [@Quintas](#): > > This thing that is constantly repeated drives me nuts. > > I just wanted to put this thread here, possibly the wrong board. This statement gets repeated in every time travel thread and generally ANY thread dealing with life prior to the 20th century. _Average_ life expectancy was low because of a high number of people who died in infancy or early childhood. People who reached adulthood **were not** dropping dead of old age at 39 or 40. > > Why won’t this misconception die?? I minored in History and have maintained a dilettante interest in it. I’ve never heard ANYONE who believes that people were dying of old age at 39 or 40. Not the most ill informed cocktail party guest. I’m sure it happens, it isn’t a huge issue. I’ve heard people state, as casdave has provided plenty of cites for, that life expectancy, even if you survived infancy, could be as low as 40. Particularly if you were of a certain class - the urban poor in Victorian England had it rough. Another public health issue in the 19th century was addiction - particularly alcoholism. Alcohol is a cheap escape from a miserable life - and with questionable water - might kill you slower. And liver damage is another life shortener. ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/31 "2009-05-25T13:18:10Z")
As for preindustrial populations, about 15 years ago I performed a cross-sectional demography on a population from the central US that lived about 4,000 years ago. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, and it was only a few hundred individuals, but I remember a few things that stuck out in my mind: [ul] [li]Male and female mortality curves were slightly inverted. That is, you’d see female deaths increase until about aqe thirty, then decrease, almost a true bell curve. On the other hand, you’d see more male deaths until about age 15 or so, a decrease, than an increase around 30. I’m guessing the female spike came from child birth, whereas the male spikes came from greater risk-taking behanvior and lower life expectancy than females. Again, this is only a guess.[/li][li]There were a \*lot \*of kids, ages 0 to about 7 or so. The numbers were especially large before age three. I don’t remember the numbers, but the average life expectancy, if you include the young children, was around 25. Not relevant to the discussion, but a lot of the children’s graves included puppy skeletons. I have no idea what was going on here. Buried with a beloved pet?[/li][li]Most of the childrens’ skeletons showed no pathology, which means that they probably died pretty suddenly. However, a lot of them did show evidence of stunted growth and certain nutritional deficiencies. These would have had to have been pretty bad to show in the skeletons.[/li][li]I don’t recall seeing any adults older than 45 or so. Most of the adults were pretty much in bad shape by the time they were 35 or 40: Few teeth, abscesses, evidence of past fractures, arthritis, and so on.[/li][/ul] So I’m pretty much considering “right now” as the Golden Age when it comes to health. ---
**Author:** ![TheMadHun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@TheMadHun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheMadHun)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/32 "2009-05-25T17:20:04Z")
I really agree - there were many old people in history Just going through a list of popes is enough to convince you that there was never a time when “40 was considered old in those days”. The average life expectancy for pharaohs who reached 40 was the same as 40 year olds in 1800, even counting those killed in office. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/33 "2009-05-25T18:25:13Z")
**TheMadHun** You perhaps missed this part of one of my posts I assume. > [@](#): > > Then, added to all that, is the quality of record keeping. Some of the best records are those of the clergy, however these simply do not reflect the mortality of the population at large. ---
**Author:** ![lobotomyboy63](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobotomyboy63/32/2900_2.png) [@lobotomyboy63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lobotomyboy63)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/34 "2009-05-25T21:03:23Z")
On the subject of diseases that many died from in the past: _In 1898 Heroin, the Bayer trademark name for diacetylmorphine, was commercially introduced to every corner of the Earth. Contrary to common assertion, Heroin was not recommended for treatment of morphine or opium habits. Rather, Heroin filled a desperate need for a powerful cough suppressant. The leading causes of death at that time, tuberculosis and pneumonia, were linked to uncontrollable coughing. Heroin performed well in preliminary testing by the manufacturer and upon release was hailed for its effectiveness._ [http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/R324.aspx](http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/R324.aspx) ETA as many/most of you already know, it was over the counter. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2009, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449/35 "2009-05-25T23:14:25Z")
> [@KlondikeGeoff](#): > > When I was young, I had heard this statistic about life expecency, but when I went through some old graveyards, I was astonished at how many people in the 19th and even 18th century had gravestones showing they lived into the 70s and even 80s. There’s a bias there, in that the people most able to pay for a prominent headstone or tomb, one which would withstand a couple of centuries of erosion, are those who have amassed a significant wealth. They’re more likely to (a) have had good health throughout their life, and (b) have acquired that money over a greater-than-average span of time. (Or to put it another way, consider how many pauper’s graves were filled for every headstone you saw.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stop-saying-people-prior-to-the-20th-century-died-at-40/497449.md?page=1)