This ties in to questions that have occured to me over the time. I can accept that elves may be a lot tougher than men and will recover from wounds that would be fatal to men, partly because of the different balance between their souls and bodies, but maybe they could say bleed to death but would be immune from infection? However, it seems clear that since elves were lost both in the Helcaraxe and in the ice bay of Forochel, they must be able to drown (cf Amroth also) or die of exposure in extreme conditions. However if I remember correctly, Maedhros, expected to be on Thangorodrim forever ... so can you starve an elf to death (don't try that at home children
)?
More generally, the one case I can think of of a woman dying in childbirth, is Theoden's wife Elfhild. Given the high maternal mortality rates in the west until the 1930s and existant in the developing world, this seems surprising. Of course because things are not mentioned, it does not mean they did not happen and so this may be in the category of " things that are not documented because they could have reasonably assumed to have happened". Or thsi was an aspect of Middle Earth that was different to out own world and Elfhild was peculiarly unlucky. As was her sister-in law Theodwyn who died of a sickness, which nevertheless spared her children.
It is possible that these deaths are plot devices rather than representative examples of the health of the populations of Middle Earth, but I can't help noticing that it is the women of the "middle men", who die from mundane causes while the dunedain women are too noble to do anything so vulgar and have to die of grief in Eldar fashion.
