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jinasphinxNY Times article: So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn’t Even Know You. Some interesting bits:
Scientists used to say that the reason people are living so long these days is that medicine is keeping them alive, though debilitated. But studies like one Dr. Fogel directs, of Union Army veterans, have led many to rethink that notion.
....
The first surprise was just how sick people were, and for how long. .... They discovered that almost everyone of the Civil War generation was plagued by life-sapping illnesses, suffering for decades. ... Even teenagers were ill. Eighty percent of the male population ages 16 to 19 tried to sign up for the Union Army in 1861, but one out of six was rejected because he was deemed disabled.
And the Union Army was not very picky. “Incontinence of urine alone is not grounds for dismissal,” said Dora Costa...quoting from the regulations. A man who was blind in his right eye was disqualified from serving because that was his musket eye. But, ... “blindness in the left eye was O.K.”
....
Men living in the Civil War era had an average height of 5-foot-7 and weighed an average of 147 pounds. ... Today, men average 5-foot-9½ and weigh an average of 191 pounds...
And here's an interesting short story about life in the Monsanto world after peak oil.
NYT article
Date: 2006-08-02 06:22 am (UTC)There are some odd things about that article. First, there was recently a study comparing overall health of people in the U.S. to people in Britain; by every single measure, we came out terrible by comparison. So this is a little anomalous to see someone singing the praises of U.S. health without even mentioning that.
Second, there is the repeated use in the article of 19th century examples as somehow representing what life was like in the past-in-general (for 7000 years, evolutionarily etc.). The 19th century was a really weird, really unhealthy century for numerous reasons, mostly (but not entirely) revolving around urbanization.
Why the 19th century was so unhealthy: people drank. A lot. Not beer or wine, either, but distilled spirits (like, a gallon a week); alcohol was a major source of calories for most of the population, including children. Opiates were widely available; they were used to dope up small children to keep them quiet. Children were wet nursed and/or baby farmed (depending on the income level and options available to the mother) at high rates; grain-food was introduced at younger and younger ages and age of weaning dropped throughout the century (and continued to drop in the 20th century until we had most babies formula fed from birth in the early 1970s). The number of hours worked, especially by those in factories, but also on farms, was at a historic (and probably prehistoric, as well) high. People moved around _a lot_; there was no stable social support network. Population densities were increasing, but development of sanitary infrastructure (sewage, clean water, disposal of refuse) significantly lagged population increases. There was a lot of new machinery (in the home, on the farm and at workplaces) that was incredibly dangerous. There was a lot more traffic (causing deadly accidents -- hard to imagine with horses, but really, really common; also the increase in population density of horses meant more shit and more disease). Air quality was _appalling_ -- people were burning wood, charcoal or bituminous (dirty) coal. Thick black skies, respiratory problems, acid rain. Lots of people crowded into shared living space during winters meant tuberculosis had a field day.
Oh, and most people were getting their protein -- and they ate a lot of it -- from salt pork. Yes, pork preserved in brine. You would not believe the blood pressure problems this caused, and how many people were done in by health problems that were a result of all that salt. Salt cod also common. Remember, this is pre-refrigeration, but post-urbanization.
What else: sick cows spreading TB. Rats spreading everything imaginable. Window screens weren't available yet and bed nets weren't prevelant enough, so mosquitos spreading everything (malaria was around in the U.S. until the 1930s, when TVA eliminated it with window screens in worker housing to stamp out the last of it). Oh, and adulterated _everything_: god knows what in the sausage, alum and chalk in the bread, on and on. Pure Food and Drug Act was during the first decade of the 20th century, and was the result of intense lobbying over a period of years (altho _The Jungle_ did help out a lot).
What was it like _before_ urbanization? Not like this, let me tell you. I'm not saying it was some paradise (it was not, at least not in the U.S.). But you can take a look at the Dutch Republic, and life expectancy and lifetime health and you'd be hard pressed to beat their lives.
Weird, weird, weird article.
Re: NYT article
Date: 2006-08-02 11:56 pm (UTC)