Tithonios, the miserable wretch of Greek mythology to whom the gods awarded eternal life, but not eternal youth.

 As human life expectancy increases due to our increased ability to prevent and cure disease, we are still left with a general aging syndrome that is characteristic of our species. Unless attention is paid to the general aging syndrome, we risk ending up like Tithonios, the miserable wretch of Greek mythology to whom the gods awarded eternal life, but not eternal youth.

Given that in most times and places, humans did not live much past 40 years, our awareness of human aging is relatively new. 

A 65-year-old person was rare in colonial America, but is a common sight today. Some survival curves for female Homo sapiens in the United States are plotted in 

In 1900, 50% of American women were dead by age 58. In 1980, 50% of American women were dead by age 81. Thus, the phenomena of senescence and the diseases of aging are much more common today than they were a century ago.

 In 1900, people did not have the “luxury” of dying from heart attacks or cancers. These diseases generally occur in people over the age of 50 years. Rather, people died (as they are still dying in many parts of the world) from infectious diseases and parasites (Arking 1998). 

Similarly, until recently, relatively few people exhibited the more general human sensecent phenotype: graying hair, sagging and wrinkling skin, joint stiffness, osteoporosis (loss of bone calcium), loss of muscle fibers and muscular strength, memory loss, eyesight deterioration, and the slowing of sexual responsiveness. As Shakespeare noted in As You Like It, those who did survive to senescence left the world “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”