> it was likely much shorter on average The average includes a huge number of deaths of children and of mothers though - not counting those risks (childhood, e

> it was likely much shorter on average The average includes a huge number of deaths of children and of mothers though - not counting those risks (childhood, especially the very early one, and giving birth) it's higher than most people think. In a lecture on microbes (http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/return-of-the-microbes-how-infections-are-once-more-taking-over http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/return-of-the-m...) the professor mentions as an aside that a late Victorian British citizen after excluding those risks actually had a slightly longer life-expectancy than a modern British citizen! While that is fairly recent it still is long before modern medicine and antibiotics. Quote: > And what is interesting, if you take out the childhood mortality, the Victorian person between 1850 and 1880 lived slightly longer, if he was a male, than you do today. ("if he was male": giving birth was very risky) So it seems that good food (variety plus enough of it) and hygiene did most of the job of extending life-expectancy outside the above two risks - and modern medicine very significantly lowered childhood and birth (mother) deaths. In the light of such evidence modern medicine does not seem to have had a great effect on life expectancy once you made it past childhood. We can't do anything against "aging".