What are the diseases that used to or still cause a person to die before age 35?

Question

Also, if you can, (I know it's an ODD question) tell me in what decades these medical beliefs were most prominent, and if any of those diseases now have a better prognosis, such as life lived beyond the age of 70.

May seem a very insensitive question, but actually, I'm also asking if you know of someone whose child was declared a "futureless" person due to such a disease, and did they take care of the child less well than the other ones, and worry more about them, and be surprised when they made it into adulthood "after all" and what problems does the person have. Thanks.

Note: I am asking about rare things, not about incidental things such as death by suicide, accidents, homicide.

Answer 1

In terms of unusual stuff, we have all the juvenile cancers, and cancers that affect young adults, notably cervical cancer in young women. Many of these cancers have much better outcomes today than ever before.

Schizophrenic used to have a much shorter life expectancy, as much as 20-30 years shorter than the general population before we had drugs to put it into remission, and a moderately cohesive medical system. The age of onset is the early 20s, and many schizophrenics were essentially considered useless, or futureless burdens, much like the mentally handicapped. The 1950s and earlier are when these ideas persisted.

Cholera, used to kill folks by the tens of thousands, especially children before antibiotics and IV rehydration. Not a chronic illness, but one that killed many, many people.

A lot of what we consider chronic illness now: epilepsy, immune system problems, allergies, diabetes used to have much worse outcomes. Keep in mind that if we drop back 80 years, the average life expectancy was between 30 and 40 depending on the area. In fact for most of human history, the average lifespan of a person was -under- thirty years.

Hope that's some useful information for your question.