THE NOT-SO-GOOD OLE DAYS

(Excerpted from The Great Upheaval: America And The Birth Of The Modern World 1788-1800, by Jay Winik).

“The waning decades of the seventeenth century remained, for a majority of mankind, the bleakest of times… Only half of infants made it past

 their first year; in the British colonial city of Boston, a quarter of all newborns died before they reached a mere seven days.  Middle age was

one’s thirties and few lived beyond forty.  Most were haunted by disease…  Indeed, it is a remarkable fact that in the seventeenth century

Europe’s population actually declined.  Nor was this just due to the dark reigns of pestilence.  This simplest of infections was perilous.

And with depressing regularity failed harvests and famine swept the continent, which only added to death’s grisly toll.”