Using adult life-long histories of health experience among a group of men and women born in Britain between 1725 and 1874, this paper examines individual health during the mortality decline. The risk of initiating a new sickness declined sharply between the cohorts born in the eighteenth century and those born during 1825-74, but the average duration of each episode increased. As successive cohorts added to their life expectancy, survival time rose more sharply than did well time. Continuity rather than change is apparent in another aspect of their health experience, the capacity of prior health to predict future sickness and wellness. Among the men and the women and in the eighteenth-century cohorts as well as the cohorts of 1825-74, the degree of wellness or sickness evident early in adult life strongly predicted future sick time for 15 to 20 years, and strongly predicted future sickness events for a longer period still. Moreover, women surpassed men in their propensity to hold on to the health status exhibited in early adulthood.