The thing that comes to my mind is how readily people died of what these
days are trivial illnesses. There's a passage in Jane Austen's 'Emma', where
someone was ill with a septic throat, and someone else visited her in spite
of being advised that it was a very dangerous thing to do. I used to think,
What wimps. Then I realised that there were no antibiotics, and that it
would have been perfectly possible to die of septicaemia developing from a
severe case of tonsillitis, thus making this an illness to be dreaded rather
than treated almost casually. If you could survive things like that, you
could well go on to be 90. Survival of the fittest, indeed.
joanna
>I guess to a large extent people say premature thinking of contemporary
> standards.
>
> But, and there are always buts, if one discounted infant mortalities, and
> excluded the poorer part of the population, I'd hazard that
> life-expectancy
> among the better off after childhood might have been a bit closer to
> current averages than one might think.
>
> I do understand that, where average height was concerned, in the Middle
> Ages, the upper classes seemed to have been closer to modern norms than
> the
> diminutive poor, simply because of better nutrition (just as average
> height
> has increased in post Second World War Japan for instance)
>
> There were the epidemics too, of course. And a society where street
> violence
> was probably much more common than today, whatever we might think.
>
> Thomas Hobbes, born 1588, lived into his nineties I think.
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
> I don't understand why age 52 would be considered premature in 1616 or
> whatever it was. Has anyone ever made an educated guess at the
> mortality rate (on whatever basis) during the Tudor and early Stuart
> periods? Were there any effective treatments for anything back then?
> The real exception appeared to be William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who
> lived to a month short of 80 years, a practically unheard of feat--all I
> can think is he must've had some phenomenal genes. One report I read is
> that Elizabeth was so upset she attempted to feed the dying old man from
> her own hand.
>
> It seems hard to set a rule. Among writers, Ben Jonson made it to 65,
> Webster (with question mark dates) was in his 40s, Cyril Tourneur may
> have been 51, Thomas Middleton was 47, John Ford seems never to have
> died (no known end date), Milton was 66, Marvell was 57, and Rochester
> was 33...but not having seen the film of his life, I have no idea
> whether he died of syphilis, TB, or falling down a flight of stairs
> while drunk, a la Fritz Wunderlich the late German lyric tenor.
>
> Well, it is my birthday, 62, so I've beaten out everyone but Burghley,
> Jonson, and Milton. Sure I have....
>
> Ken
> -----------------------------
> Ken Wolman
> Miercom
> www.mier.com
> 609-490-0200, ext. *8-14
>
>> On the news this morning: scientists comparing the four "known"
>> contemporary portraits of Shakespeare (it should be alleged, or
> claimed,
>> or believed, but anyhow) state that comparison indicates he had a
> tumour
>> over his left eye which indicates a cancer that lead to his early
> demise.
>>
>> Yuck. Just what you want to hear over breakfast. As the news usually
> is.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Dave
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