Old Age is Not for the Faint of Heart

It suffices to say that life expectancy determination is a modern construct;

Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh ——Bio and Archives--April 25, 2026

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Isidore of Seville wrote in the seventh century that “there are six stages in a lifetime: infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, and old age.” He defined old age as beginning at 70.

In the thirteenth century, Phillipe de Novare wrote The Four Ages of Men, in which he chose old age as sixty. He subdivided old age into two stages, senectus (Latin for old), elderly but still active, and senium (senile), refers to the final stage of the human lifespan, specifically associated with the physical and mental declines of old age .

In our society, old people are spoken of as seniors. Seniors can be someone fifty-five plus, 60, or 65, depending on who makes the decision to put people into categories. And then, there is the unkind definition of old people as “units,’ enshrined into the Affordable Care Act.

If you are sixty-five or older, you are in the eighteen percent population........

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