People often have misconceptions about life expectancy in the past. The reason why it was so low was because of childhood/infant mortality. If you made it past early childhood your chances of living decently long were fine. This is not to say that there weren’t tons of hazards. Diseases and medical conditions that are easily avoidable today weren’t back then.

And given what RFK Jr. Is doing now, we will be seeing a resurgence of that in the US today.