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Thanks, MP.

Re: this - "Period life expectancy extended for younger ages, but shortened for older ages. Older people were very susceptible to infectious disease, especially pneumonia, in the pre-antibiotic age."

Shortened from the previous period measured?

Why would older people become MORE susceptible to pneumonia?

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Oct 15·edited Oct 15Author

Notice that the shortening was a fraction of a year. For the 19th century, life expectancy from age 60 was fairly flat in that there was a bunch of noise up & down from flu & harsh winters going through. I see seasonality in The deaths of the elderly now… must have been even worse in the age without (m)any effective treatment for diseases

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I'm not sure the seasonality was as exaggerated as we might think - or that the "season" of death was mostly winter.

I say this based on look at NYC daily data from the early 20th century. You might be surprised how stable the numbers were throughout the year. Summer looks like the bigger problem - and the EOY record-keeping drops off with holiday breaks for the record-keepers, it appears.

I've wondered if historical January "peaks" are actually more an artifact of the breaks than pneumonia necessarily being *that* much worse in winter.

I'm also very surprised you did not leverage your extensive knowledge of Dickensian literature in this post! I was expecting a "Hard Times" or "Great Expectations" pun. :)

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