Why infants and children died at a horrific rate in the Middle Ages?

Quote For starters, infants and children died at a horrific rate (some say up to 1/3 of all died before the age of 5) Quote

https://www.sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/

Why did infants and children died at a horrific rate in the Middle Ages?

Most people only lived to mid 40s.

What happen in the Middle Ages people died so early?

Was there just more bacterial and virus back in that time?

I don't think public or personal hygiene was a thing then. People used to throw body waste and household rubbish anywhere. Food was seasonal and a very narrow range to choose from.

3 minutes ago, Moon99 said:

Was there just more bacterial and virus back in that time?

Probably not more. No need for that hypothesis.

No modern medicine, which allows us to prevent or more effectively treat a lot of diseases. Reduced concept of what caused diseases, so fewer countermeasures were taken. Filth and unsanitary conditions. Lack of indoor plumbing.

1 hour ago, swansont said:

No modern medicine, which allows us to prevent or more effectively treat a lot of diseases. Reduced concept of what caused diseases, so fewer countermeasures were taken. Filth and unsanitary conditions. Lack of indoor plumbing.

Definitely the modern medical advancements. After all, in the Middle Ages, there was far less pollution and everybody was eating organic, yet life expectancy was under 50.

50 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Definitely the modern medical advancements. After all, in the Middle Ages, there was far less pollution and everybody was eating organic, yet life expectancy was under 50.

The pollution was their own body waste and the movement into cities from the countryside as a result of the later industrial revolution, concentrating populations, made it worse for a time, I think, until germ theory was a thing.

Vaccines is a big one and smallpox being a good example in particular.

Eradicated now but it is estimated to have killed half a billion people in total.

Child birth was a risk only a few hundred years ago, no pre natal medicine for potential issues and no sterile conditions for the birth itself, stated from other posters that germ theory had not been developed.

A failed crop could be devastating to a community and there was no technology regarding pesticides or high yield crops.

Childhood illness, treatable today like asthma, type one diabetes, respiratory infections, some cancers would have been a death sentence in those times.

Water borne illness is still a big killer today in certain parts of the world and would have been a lot worse then and more widespread.

7 hours ago, Moon99 said:

Why infants and children died at a horrific rate in the Middle Ages?

Quote For starters, infants and children died at a horrific rate (some say up to 1/3 of all died before the age of 5) Quote

https://www.sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/

Why did infants and children died at a horrific rate in the Middle Ages?

Most people only lived to mid 40s.

What happen in the Middle Ages people died so early?

Was there just more bacterial and virus back in that time?

Childhood diseases, mainly.

Infant mortality actually remained high until the end of the c.19th. I suspect the hygiene issue may actually have been more important after the Industrial Revolution, when so may people moved to cities in crowded conditions without good sanitation, which promoted the transmission of disease (typhoid etc). In the Middle Ages it may have been more a mix of factors, including childhood diseases but also the harshness of the climate when housing was very basic, variations in nutrition due to reliance on subsistence farming, and so on. Infants have small body weight, so the cold of winter, shortages of food or the effects of illness would be more likely to kill them than a larger adult with more bodily reserves. In the early months breast feeding would have been essential as there was no possibility of bottle feeding. So if the mother could not breast feed (and illness or death of mothers from puerperal fever was common) the child might die unless a wet nurse could be found.

Regarding your comment that "most people only lived to mid 40s", be careful. There can be confusion of average life expectancy with how long adults could be expected to live. Because so many infants died before they were 5, the effect of these early deaths on the statistics for the population is to bring down sharply the average life expectancy. If one was lucky enough to survive to one's twenties, there was a good chance of living some way past 40. (In your twenties the big risks would have been warfare for young men and death in or after childbirth for young women. If you made it to 30, you might live to 50 or 60.)

Edited July 31Jul 31 by exchemist

5 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Definitely the modern medical advancements. After all, in the Middle Ages, there was far less pollution and everybody was eating organic, yet life expectancy was under 50.

Really? I would like to inform you that Diogenes of Sinope lived to be 90 years old. He died at 323 BC. He was a cynic. If you don't know anything about the Cynics, you are welcome to read it.

And about "hygiene", he didn't use a cup or a plate.

BTW, Augustine of Hippo died at the age of 83.

5 minutes ago, m_m said:

Really? I would like to inform you that Diogenes of Sinope lived to be 90 years old. He died at 323 BC. He was a cynic. If you don't know anything about the Cynics, you are welcome to read it.

And about "hygiene", he didn't use a cup or a plate.

BTW, Augustine of Hippo died at the age of 83.

That two individuals lived to a great age tells us precisely zero about the life expectancy of the population.

1 hour ago, m_m said:

Really? I would like to inform you that Diogenes of Sinope lived to be 90 years old. He died at 323 BC. He was a cynic. If you don't know anything about the Cynics, you are welcome to read it.

And about "hygiene", he didn't use a cup or a plate.

BTW, Augustine of Hippo died at the age of 83.

Do you know what an anecdote is?

And how averages work? (dying children has a big effect on average lifespan)

4 hours ago, Moon99 said:

Why infants and children died at a horrific rate in the Middle Ages?

Quote For starters, infants and children died at a horrific rate (some say up to 1/3 of all died before the age of 5) Quote

https://www.sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/

Why did infants and children died at a horrific rate in the Middle Ages?

Most people only lived to mid 40s.

What happen in the Middle Ages people died so early?

Was there just more bacterial and virus back in that time?

The reasons are complicated.

Here are a couple of links showing how these figures are compiled and digging into some of the reasons and identifying the major ones is carried out.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2868286/

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/howhaslifeexpectancychangedovertime/2015-09-09

I note your link and discussion was about Wales.

General polulations in medieaval Wales were significantly less mobile than today so there was more local inbreeding, leading to an increase in any condition that lead to an early demise.

If nothing dies, the cycle is broken...

4 hours ago, m_m said:

Really? I would like to inform you

That's a bold move, Cotton. Too bad it didn't pay off for you, mostly because you don't understand what average life expectancy means.

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

That two individuals lived to a great age tells us precisely zero about the life expectancy of the population.

Right, because a population is a modern term, it excludes individuals. You reject science before 20cent but you are very informed about the population before 20 cent.

What is your sampling? What are your respondents? Where is your data? And I'm keen on to know about the age BC.

In today's world, children also die. Because of cancer, heart disease, etc.

5 minutes ago, m_m said:

Right, because a population is a modern term, it excludes individuals. You reject science before 20cent but you are very informed about the population before 20 cent.

What is your sampling? What are your respondents? Where is your data? And I'm keen on to know about the age BC.

Don't be a berk. Of course I don't reject science before the c.20th. You have made that up and it's absurd. A lot of modern science (e.g. thermodynamics, electromagnetic induction, periodic table of elements, gas laws etc.) dates from the c.19th and c.18th. Newton's laws date from the c.17th.

My point to you was simply that a couple of instances tell you nothing about a whole population. It's like saying, "I've never been in a car crash so car crashes don't exist."

13 minutes ago, m_m said:

Right, because a population is a modern term, it excludes individuals.

It has NOTHING to do with being "modern", and everything to do with the definition. Population (colony, settlement, assemblage, whatever you want to call it) excludes individuals because it's a word describing the people as a whole. You figuratively can't see the forest because you're so focused on the trees.

1 hour ago, m_m said:

In today's world, children also die. Because of cancer, heart disease, etc.

Yes and they died in larger numbers back then because of the reasons we gave.

Can we get back to the original question about the middle ages please.

Here is a well balanced and summary of the influence on the Plague at that time.

Apologies, the Philips Atlas of World History is large and cumbersome and difficult to load onto the scanner.

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

Don't be a berk. Of course I don't reject science before the c.20th. You have made that up and it's absurd. A lot of modern science (e.g. thermodynamics, electromagnetic induction, periodic table of elements, gas laws etc.) dates from the c.19th and c.18th. Newton's laws date from the c.17th.

My point to you was simply that a couple of instances tell you nothing about a whole population. It's like saying, "I've never been in a car crash so car crashes don't exist."

He singled out black swan events and is using those to be representative.

Edited July 31Jul 31 by StringJunky

Just now, StringJunky said:

He singled out black swan events and is using those to be representative.

Well perhaps old men were not quite such a rarity as that, but certainly not at all representative.

20 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

He singled out black swan events and is using those to be representative.

I'm she, thank you very much. And I think that the black swan argument is yours.

7 hours ago, m_m said:

Really? I would like to inform you that Diogenes of Sinope lived to be 90 years old. He died at 323 BC. He was a cynic. If you don't know anything about the Cynics, you are welcome to read it.

And about "hygiene", he didn't use a cup or a plate.

We are talking about the general populace, not just a few people who by chance happened to live to that age, please re read the question

2 hours ago, m_m said:

Right, because a population is a modern term, it excludes individuals. You reject science before 20cent but you are very informed about the population before 20 cent.

What is your sampling? What are your respondents? Where is your data? And I'm keen on to know about the age BC.

In today's world, children also die. Because of cancer, heart disease, etc.

Yes they do. But we’ve done a lot to reduce infectious diseases, and that’s one of the differences.

You don’t have to go back all that far to see much, much higher infant mortality

https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd005/

https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality

13 minutes ago, swansont said:

You don’t have to go back all that far to see much, much higher infant mortality

Essentially you can extend the graphs from 1800 all the way back to the middle ages as seen in the second link. In the US, for example, child mortality hovered around 45% through the first half of the 1800s. So rather than asking why child mortality was so high in the middle ages, one could argue that our "normal" child mortality is around 50% and things only started to change around 200 years ago. I.e. the modern times are the anomaly in our history (though the US is trying really hard to reverse that).

30 minutes ago, swansont said:

Yes they do. But we’ve done a lot to reduce infectious diseases, and that’s one of the differences.

You don’t have to go back all that far to see much, much higher infant mortality

https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd005/

https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality

swansont, yes, you've done a lot. But people of that ages lived as they lived. They had their instruments, they didn't have all this modern equipment.

They also struggled to find innovations, made mistakes, they left their inheritance for us. What if your descendants forget things you do?

Edited July 31Jul 31 by m_m