In 1929, a young woman entered Koch Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Her symptoms may have included coughing, difficulty breathing, and fatigue. She was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. The disease is caused by a bacterium and, at the time, had no cure. Her doctor admitted her to a hospital that specialized in the care and quarantine of tuberculosis patients for a long-term stay. She would likely have been prescribed rest, regular meals, and good air. She spent ten months there until succumbing to her disease at the age of twenty-seven.
In 2015, an elderly woman entered a hospital near Orlando, Florida. She was experiencing the symptoms of chronic diseases associated with old age, including Alzheimer’s Disease. In the months and years leading up to her death, she may have used medications to manage her symptoms and may have experienced confusion and anxiety. In the days before death, she was likely heavily medicated to ease her discomfort and may have had little awareness of her surroundings. Under the watchful eye of medical staff and family, she died at the age of eighty-seven.
The two women died eighty years apart. Only one had access to advanced modern medicine: she lived a longer and healthier life, dying in old age of chronic disease. But was her death any better for it? Anthropologists may have found the answer to this question in an unlikely place: the women’s hair. A new study of stress hormones in human hair from dead individuals across nearly a century may hold the answer to how the experience of dying has changed (or not) with improvements in modern medicine.
Few would contest that advancements in modern medicine have improved the lives of people today. The development of antibiotics, vaccines, cancer treatments, and more means that people are living longer and healthier lives than at any point in the past. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, people in the United States today live on average twenty years longer than in the 1920s and are more likely to die of chronic conditions than of infections. One need only look at the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccines and treatments to be awed by the pace of advancement. In its goal of prolonging life, modern medicine has undoubtedly succeeded.