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Trains and open waterways spurred an economic boom in the Antebellum, but they also drove down Americans' health. AP Photo
An interesting view point...
Weirdly, Canals and Trains Made Pre-Civil-War Americans Smaller
Laura Bliss
Aug 28, 2018
Why a transportation revolution had some unanticipated side effects. A strange thing happens on the way to modernity: people get sicker and shorter. That’s the “Antebellum Puzzle,” a term for the measurable decline in health of the U.S. population in the four decades ahead of the Civil War, even as urbanization and industrialization sent GDP skyrocketing. Historians have shown that during the economic-boom decades between 1820 and 1860, heights and lifespans shrank for the average American—including white men and women, as well as free black men and women—by as much as an inch.
Full article can be found here - https://www.citylab.com/transportat...nfrastructure-was-bad-for-your-health/568735/
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