12/04/2023

Medieval Advice for Living Forever

Living longer isn't a current trend

In recent years, the quest for eternal life has become big business, as a growing number of biotechnology start-ups race to develop a drug which can prevent aging. Many of them are funded by Silicon Valley billionaires who hope to be the first humans to live forever, and who have personally committed to strict health regimes in the hope of achieving this goal.

While the technology may be new, the quest for longevity is not. Indeed, it was also an obsession of elite medieval Europeans. Then and now, the quest for immortality is based on optimizing the body, using lifestyle changes and more outlandish techniques, in an attempt to prolong life beyond its usual span. And yet, the lesson, then and now, seems to be that the quest for immortality is less about advancing scientific knowledge for the good of all mankind, and more about harnessing that knowledge for the benefit of the most privileged members of society.

Although plague and other infectious diseases brought high death rates in medieval Europe, those who reached adulthood had a reasonable chance of surviving into their seventh or eighth decade; in some early 15^th century Italian towns, around 15 percent of the population was over 60. Just like us, medieval people wanted to live long, healthy lives and hoped to emulate long-lived relatives.

Please select this link to read the complete article from TIME.