This seems to imply that most people would die in their 40s from one cause or another before the 20th century, which is patently untrue. This is entirely from i

This seems to imply that most people would die in their 40s from one cause or another before the 20th century, which is patently untrue. This is entirely from infant and childhood illnesses. If you made into grade school in the 1800s you were nearly as likely to live into your 70s as you are 200 years later. > ‘… life expectancy in the mid-Victorian period was not markedly different from what it is today. Once infant mortality is stripped out, life expectancy at 5 years was 75 for men and 73 for women.’ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/ It seems the only real change modern medicine has had with regard to life expectancy is maternal mortality (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/table/tbl2/?report=objectonly https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/table/t... from the same article)