“It is estimated,” said Dr. Felton, the learned Georgia
statesman, divine, and M.D., in an address before the graduating
class of Atlanta Medical College, “that human life has increased
twenty-five per cent in the past fifty years.” The average human
life in Rome under Cæsar was eighteen years; now it is forty.
The average in France fifty years ago was twenty-eight; the mean
duration in 1887 was forty-five and one-half years. In Geneva
during the thirteenth century a generation played its part upon
the stage and disappeared in fourteen years; now the drama
requires forty years before the curtain falls. During the golden
reign of good Queen Bess, in London and all the large cities of
merry old England, fifty out of every 1,000 paid the last debt
to nature early, which means instead of threescore-and-ten, they
averaged but one score. Now, in the city of London, the average
is forty-seven years.--DR. TODD.
(1880)
See IMPROVED CONDITIONS.