Instead of studying . . .

While doing a practice MCAT this weekend, I had to read a Verbal Reasoning passage about the origin of retirement communities during the 60s and 70s. For the most part, it wasn't interesting, but it made a fascinating point early on. It pointed out that until relatively recently, old age and death were not really associated with each other. During the French Revolution, for instance, only about 10% of mortalities occured in people over sixty. About a quarter of all deaths were infants. Thus, as late as the mid-nineteenth century, at the beginnings of modern medicine, no one's mental picture of death included old people, which at least to me, is quite a thought.

Ordinarily, I'd start pontificating at this point, but I have to study.