Shakespeare defined seven ages of man, and in his time death was no stranger in all of these groups; Shakespeare died in his early 50's.

Economic development and modern medicine have gradually squeezed life-threatening conditions to the extremes of life: the mewing infant in the developing world, and the seventh age in the developed world increasingly are where death and serious illness are concentrated.

Even in the last 15 years, the average age of onset of much life-changing illness in the UK has gone up significantly, and the average age of global childhood deaths has gone down with over 40% of under 5 year old deaths now in the first 28 days of life.

The lecture will explore why this reduction in deaths and serious disease in the period from early childhood to late old age has happened, and provide an initial exploration of what we can learn for future improvements.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-transient-universe

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,500 lectures free to access or download from the website.
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