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What could they possibly do to make their lives shorter? Hire doctors who believed in bloodletting to treat their illnesses.

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I'm perfectly willing to believe the result of the studies of ducal families, because Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, in his statistical analysis of tuberculosis and typhoid patients in 1835, had already discovered the rich who got those diseases were more likely to die than the poor who got those diseases.

Why? People who got sick and who could afford doctors got treated with bloodletting. People who got sick and who could not afford doctors did not. The former, weakened by the blood loss, were more likely to die than the latter.

So, sure, the rich had better food, shelter, etc., that translated into longer potential lifespans. But they could also hire doctors when they got ill, which helped kill them earlier than they would have died.

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