Were the Victorians healthier than us?

[LadyStanley]

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37654373

According to a study published in the Royal Society of Medicine, "How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died", the combination of enormous amounts of physical activity (most people did physically demanding jobs which meant they were active for 50 to 60 hours a week) and a diet rich in fruits, whole grains, oily fish and vegetables meant that Victorians suffered less from chronic, degenerative diseases than we do.

Dr Paul Clayton, one of the authors of the study, claims that they were "90% less likely to develop cancer, dementia and coronary artery disease than we are today". It certainly meant that diseases like type-2 diabetes, which plague modern society, were vanishingly rare.

But I don't know that I'd like to live in that era after reading the rest of the article.

Click to read more...

 

[RandV]

So good that they didn't have diabetes, sucks that apart from the wealthy everyone was around 5'?

 

[PredsV82]

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37654373



But I don't know that I'd like to live in that era after reading the rest of the article.

didn't read the article, but Im pretty sure life expectancy back then was decades less than it is now, so its likely that folks didn't live long enough to get cancer and most never had enough food to get type 2 diabetes and other obesity related illnesses

 

[No Fun Shogun]

Maybe wealthy Victorians were healthier than wealthy folks are today, but for the rest of the 99.5%? I highly doubt it.

This is a couple years old, but it clearly shows that even Western countries experienced growth in lifespans over the past century.



Obesity issues aside, humanity has never been healthier.

 

[hatterson]

didn't read the article, but Im pretty sure life expectancy back then was decades less than it is now, so its likely that folks didn't live long enough to get cancer and most never had enough food to get type 2 diabetes and other obesity related illnesses

Overall life expectancy was certainly lower, although from what the study says that's actually very heavily influenced by the incredible rate of infant mortality.

I haven't seen the data, but the claim is that if you exclude those who died prior to 5 years old, life expectancy is very close to current day.

If we strip out peri-natal mortality, however, and look at the life expectancy of those who survived the first five years, a very different picture emerges. Victorian contemporary sources reveal that life expectancy for adults in the mid-Victorian period was almost exactly what it is today. At 65, men could expect another ten years of life; and women another eight [24,32,33] (the lower figure for women reflects the high danger of death in childbirth, mainly from causes unrelated to malnutrition). This compares surprisingly favourably with today’s figures: life expectancy at birth (reflecting our improved standards of neo-natal care) averages 75.9 years (men) and 81.3 years (women); though recent work has suggested that for working class men and women this is lower, at around 72 for men and 76 for women [34].

If we accept the working class figures, which are probably more directly comparable with the Victorian data, women have gained three years of life expectancy since the mid-Victorian period while men have actually fallen back by 3 years.

 

[Acallabeth]

I haven't seen the data, but the claim is that if you exclude those who died prior to 5 years old, life expectancy is very close to current day.

...having no antibiotics and surgery and aniseptic in their infancy, which means a mere pneumonia or cholecstitis would be a way more dangerous disease than now.
Well, it's not much of news that most our contemporaries have an extremely unhealthy lifestyle and habits.

 

[Siamese Dream]

Have a read of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 by Friedrich Engels and The People of the Abyss by Jack London