1856 - Health and medicine
The biggest surprise emerging from... new studies is that many chronic
ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an
average of 10 to 25 years later [today] than they used to...
[People in mid-19th century America]
expected to develop chronic diseases by their 40’s or 50’s.
They died in their 50’s or 60’s...
In 1900, 13 percent of people who were 65 could expect to see 85. Now,
nearly half of 65-year-olds can expect to live that long.
So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You
(The New York Times, July 30, 2006)
Recent historical research has largely confirmed the abolitionist
indictment of slavery...
Infants and children were badly malnourished...
Squalid living conditions aggravated health problems...
We now know that slaves suffered extremely high
mortality. Half of all slave infants died during their first year of
life, twice the rate of white babies... [The slave death rate] remained
twice the white rate through age 14. As a result of this high infant and
childhood death rate, the average life expectancy of a slave at birth
was just 21 or 22 years, compared to 40 to 43 years for antebellum
whites. Compared to whites, relatively few slaves lived into old age.
Between 1830 and 1860, only 10 percent of U.S. slaves were over 50 years
What Was Life Like Under Slavery? (University of Houston)