Ways of Dying in 1665

Parthenia is a fabulous name, almost worth having another DC for. DS was very close to being Damaris.

I read somewhere that the human mouth has more bacteria etc than the human bottom and with the state of 17th century teeth ....

OMG just about to read the mastectomy report - gruesome enough - but it is written by Fanny Burney

And talking of things which killed you then but wouldn,t now, read this court case from1695!

Parthenia Owen of the Parish of St. Giles's in the Fields , Widow , was indicted for Felony and Petty-Treason, in assaulting of her Husband, George Owen , on the 3d of December , in the Sixth Year of King William and Queen Mary, by biting, bruising, and dislocating the first Joynt on the middle Finger of his Right Hand, which swelled afterwards to his Shoulder, and he languished until the 15th of April following, and then died . She alledged, that there happened some Words between her and her Husband, and liking to fall to Blows, she by accident got his Finger into her Mouth, and did bite him as aforesaid. There was Evidence which said, That the Husband spoke well of his Wife when he languished, and that she had nursed him very kindly during that time. So the Jury having considered the whole matter, she was acquitted

Could be, couldn't it Scout.

Actually my dentist said similar - malic acid is actually quite bad for teeth apparently.

Going back to the apple pip thing, we all known the phrase an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and think the message was just about vitamins.

Maybe the message was an apple, not a bag of apples, as a warnng that any more than just an apple and it would make you ill?

I love Anya Seton. There was a biography of Katherine Swynford that came out recently, and I picked it up thinking it would be full of more details ... it was just going over the same ground Seton had done years before and making out it was all new!

I was browsing sites about Eyam and one says that about 14% of the direct descendants of Eyam survivors had immunity to bubonic plague, and this may also be related to an immunity to HIV/AIDS. I didn't understand very well as not a scientific type, but it's interesting isn't it?

Just fascinating.

And I've ordered a few of the book recommendations for some (slightly macabre) half term reading.

I for one would not be around if I lived in pre modern times. If the childhood asthma and chest infections hadn't got me, and if I'd survived Scarlatina at 9 then I'd definitely have succumbed in childbirth as at one point my blood pressure was as low as 60/40 and I needed a transfusion.

Thank God for modern medicine.

The Museum of London rocks.
I used to take students to LAARC.

This is also an excellent book albeit not for the fainthearted.

Scarlett-have you read the 'History of the PLague Year' by Daniel Defoe, equally as good, lots of description on how people behaved during the plague (the later one though obviously)

Anyone who is interested in these things you can go on a tour of the Museum of London Archaeological Archive in Hackney www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Collections-Research/LAARC/VisitArchive/LAARCtours.htm or if you have sixth formers they can volunteer there for a few weeks. All the things found in excavations in London are boxed there for researchers.

I was a very nerdy teenager and I was volunteering there when they brought this in (nearly wet my pants with excitement) and they had sacks and sacks of bones from the graveyard in Spitalfields that was being excavated (literally clear plastic sacks full of mixed bones). When we weren't needed we could open any box we wanted-my friend and I once spent a whole quiet day in the bone room looking at the baby bones and examining bones for evidence of disease. We got to do History of Medicine for GCSE so it was a fabulous opportunity, but strangely enough no-one else wanted to hear about syphilitic lesions for very long .

Oh, and I was thinking about winde and wondering if it was more to do with problems breathing, a horse with 'broken wind' can't run due to breathing problems. But this suggests it may be related to infection, maybe some sort of gangrene?

I just lost a massive post having finally got to the end of the thread . Short version is:
This is interesting to understand a little of how people thought of medicine
Cancre may be syphilis
Dropsy is oedema, which can be related to heart failure which may have been caused by rheumatic fever at the time

Thanks for the book recommendations. I've ordered Year of Wonders.

I've read Dooms Day Book. I like a nice bit of time travel. The scifi elements are a bit silly (how could they not be?) but the history is good and it is very affecting.

I am studyng epidemiology and the books all statr with the John Snow story as that was the first (known) epidemiological study. However I read in a thread on here that it wasn't all quite as it seemed!

Mirage - I suspect you may have acid soil and that is what makles everything disappear. I read that is why they bury Royalty in lead coffins. Nothing in the coffin escapes as lead does not rot away.

I enjoyed Year of Wonders and remember reading the Eyam book when I was younger.

Was another interesting thing in the cholera outbreaks that the brewery workers didn't get it. Because they didn't drink water, only beer. Beer was much safer.

Can I also recommend this:

www.amazon.co.uk/Years-Rice-Salt-Stanley-Robinson/dp/0006511481/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328452637&sr=8-1

History rewritten - if the plague had wiped out the whole of Europe rather than just a third or so, what would the world be like?

Fiction, but this is a brilliant book about the Black Death.

Another recommendation for 'The Year of Wonders',I'm bookmarking the others too.

Our village church has a chapel dedicated to the family who own the estate,and there are some spectacular [and spooky]14th century tombs in there,one of which has the couple concerned lying on a bed with all of their children surrounding the base,and another who was a notorious robber baron,whose efigy has had it's face hacked off.There is a lepers window too.

For the past few years the PCC have said that the graveyard needs to be assessed to see how many more burial plots can be fitted in.The oldest gravestones date from the late 1600's but obviously many more people were interred before then.Apparently this is done by walking around the graveyard with a rod and prodding it down into the ground to see if there is anything there or not.I'd love to see that done.

A churchwarden said that in 2010 they had dug down into the grave of someone burried in the 1960's,so that is wife could be buried there,but there was absolutely nothing left of the previous occupant,and neither was there any trace of the metal coffin fittings either.We have a high water table,but I would have thought that something would remain.

Year of Wonders is an excellent book.

I find the Spanish Flu epidemic fascinating too.

Re. sympathetic treatment - people thought walnuts were good for the brain because they look like little brains, and they genuinely are thought to protect against dementia!