Historic life expectancy data can be highly misleading. In fact, life expectancies in the western world have not increased dramatically since Victorian times - if you delete infectious diseases of childhood and young adulthood.
So when there was once a bimodal distribution of mortality - infancy and youth, and then old age, now there is only one. All of those deaths in youth skew average or median statistics to the point of meaninglessness. Antibiotics and immunization have made a huge difference.
For adult women, perhaps the main improvement was the work of Semmelweiss and his approach to childbirth.
Regarding infant mortality, it is difficult to compare the rates across countries because it depends on at what point the medical system declares an infant viable. In the US, where almost every infant is viewed as possibly viable, many more infancy deaths are named as such than in other places. It's the same phenomenon that rates Sloan-Kettering (cancer) hospital the worst hospital in the US. Many of their patients do not survive, obviously, despite possibly being the best cancer center in the world.
After the huge effect of public health, immunization, and antibiotics, medical advances have accomplished remarkable things in improving the function and independence of the elder cohort even though I have seen no stats to measure and compare this. In some ways, this is more valuable than life span alone. A generation or two ago you never saw people in their 80s playing tennis, skiing, or hiking up Mt. Washington. Now, it's common in the US (not so much in Europe).
The blessing we all have now, whether we are the half who live past the mid-late 70s, or the half who do not, is the opportunity to live what we're given with as much richness and independence as possible.
