@young_speccy When a normal citizens life expectancy is 50 in a good case you have to mature faster.
In a world with their level of infrastructure people don't live as long. He's already mentioned that medical science is way behind so a Flu outbreak will absolutely kill a lot of people.
What do you think would've happened if Balud hadn't been able to prevent a Cholera outbreak? It would've been devastating, they even say the neighbors who didn't have any knowledge of treatment lost a lot of people to it.
Plus in these days childhood mortality was a lot higher. If you had six children then odds are one or two would live to adulthood.