Old Age Uncommon Few Centuries Ago
Our ancestors of a few eenturies .ago may have had prodigious powers of work on a vitamin-rich diet, but their life expectancy was deplorably short. Their diet was ihore a matter of good luck than good management, seeing they knew Eothing about the matter from the sciehtific side as quite a number of people do to-day. One thing they certainly knew eothing 'about was sanitation, so that epidemics were frequent and devasting. Washing the whole body was something reserved for special occasions, so people carried scratchmg sticks as a matter of course, and fieas from the abundant rats faithfully inoeulated them with bubonic plague. ' Some ... of the periodic plagues were so , deyasting that aihe living could scarcely bury the dead," and there are instances of whole villages being swept away. And every .summer infants died like flies. In Shakespeare's time the average expeetation of life was somewhere •in the thirties. In those days people were healthy — -if they lived.
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Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 43, 5 November 1952, Page 7
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165Old Age Uncommon Few Centuries Ago Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 43, 5 November 1952, Page 7
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