Most of the population was illiterate and rarely washed. Their impression of health care was that physical suffering due to illness was God's heavenly way of cleansing the soul. Ignorant of microbiology and germ theory, primitive and modern physicians trusted astrology and bloodletting more than science. This old-fashioned agrarian lifestyle and viewpoint has been held true for generations. Lack of resources, battles, disease and poor hygiene have resulted in high mortality rates, especially among young people, causing society not to grow much from generation to generation. During the 1600s, approximately 25 percent of children died before their first year of life, and another 25 percent died before their tenth birthday. Epidemics of influenza, typhoid fever, typhoid, dysentery and plague were terrible