ABSTRACT
In the numerous handbooks on the care of old age published in early modern England, their authors often refer to the physical and moral decline of the world itself, as if decrepitude were a macrocosmic problem extending beyond the mere bodies of their target audience.1 Of course, Christian doctrine accounted for the discomforts of old age-and the bodily death that succeeded them-as a consequence of the first humans’ rebellion against God in the Garden of Eden. Aging became pathological as soon as we started sinning. Many English writers, however, believed they saw around them evidence that our fallen condition had worsened, that greater remoteness from Paradise translated into growing entropy in the universe.
