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Across the planet, 1.8bn human beings drink water contaminated with faeces.

Death through overwork is considered to be such a feature of the workplace in Japan that there is a word for it: karoshi.

Humans have always sought to intoxicate themselves.

Looking after someone with dementia can wipe out even a pros­perous family.

The promise of a longer life, well lived, would round a person out. But this vision of the future depends on one thing — that a long existence is also a healthy one. Humanity must avoid the trap fallen into by Tithonus, a mythical Trojan who was granted eternal life by the gods, but forgot to ask also for eternal youth. Eventually, he withered into a cicada.

In 2016 a coroner's office in Ohio had to store corpses in refrige­rated lorries for a week because residents were overdosing on opioids faster than their bodies could be processed.

How young is too young? Rich democracies give different answers, de­pending on the context: in New Jersey you can buy alcohol at 21 and cigarettes at 19, join the army at 17, have sex at 16 and be tried in court as an adult at 14.

Nothing ages faster than yesterday's dreams of tomorrow.

People around the world produce an estimated 6.4 trillion litres of urine every year.

Kids not born in the '90s, also didn't have kids in the 2010s. It's the echo of the echo.

Those who live to be very old are never previously famous. Few in the world know them, and they know almost nothing of the world.

One poll in 2016 found that French people are the most pessimis­tic on Earth, with 81% grumbling that the world is getting worse and only 3% saying that it is getting better.

End-of-life businesses also offer alternatives to costly temple grave­stones, such as scattering loved ones' ashes in Tokyo Bay (just don't tell the honeymooners to whom the boat is also offered).

More than 80% of the candidate drugs that make it into clinical trials because they worked in mice do not go on to work well in humans.

Hospital doctors have far more opportunities to earn substantial kick­backs — try seeing a good specialist in China without offering a fat "red envelope".

Every year 350 tonnes of cigarette butts, the equivalent in weight to two blue whales, are cleared off the streets of Paris alone.

The income-tax code is so knotty that America has as many tax prepar­ers per 1,000 people as Indonesia has doctors.

Diseases compete to kill people as they age; if one does not get you the next will.

Gay men's rate of anal cancer is the same as the rate of cervical cancer for women.

Julius Caesar (at the time in his 50s) swam nearly 300 metres or six lengths of an Olympic pool with his sword and purple cloak clenched between his teeth, apparently holding his official pa­pers dry above his head.

If you had to be reborn anywhere in the world as a person with average talents and income, you would want to be a Viking.

Life's candle burns most brightly when it is about to go out.

90% of the brain develops between the ages of zero to five, yet we spend 90% of our dollars on kids above the age of five.

It's a bit like being a doctor in a plague year; you'll be busy for a while, but it doesn't bode well for the long term.

John Graunt tallied causes such as "the King's Evil", a tubercular disease believed to be cured by the monarch's touch.

Many albinos are murdered by people who think that their bones contain gold or have magical powers. Some witchdoctors claim that amulets made from albino bones can cure disease or bring great wealth to those who wear them. Women are at higher risk of rape because of a myth that sex with an albino can cure HIV. A gruesome trade in their body parts has spurred killings in Tan­zania, Burundi, Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa.

Greater Manchester's 2.7m people make good guinea pigs for the experi­ment in combining health and social care — life expectancy is below av­erage, unemployment above it.

Drones can transport blood, but they can't transport doctors, who need roads.

"When good Americans die, they go to Paris," observed Thomas Gold Ap- pleton.

One high-class restaurant in Beijing specialises in animal penises, the eating of which is supposed to boost virility. Westerners visit for a titter, Chinese businessmen to impress their clients. (Yak pe­nis, says the eatery's website, is a "luxury gift for close friends".) A book of "traditional, health-preserving" recipes on sale in one of Beijing's biggest state-run bookshops includes the following reme­dy for impotence and premature ejaculation: "18 grams of caterpil­lar fungus; one fresh human placenta. Wash the caterpillar fungus and the placenta separately. Place in a saucepan, with water. Stew at high temperature until the placenta is cooked. (Drink the human placenta soup once a week for one or two weeks to see results.)"