Ways of Dying in 1665

Oh, metal toxicity is a recent discovery. There was lead in paint & arsenic in paper while I was a child - the lead paint thing was discovered when my youngest brother was a toddler, so the rest of us have sucked a bunch of lead! I've swallowed nearly all the mercury in my fillings, now, as they've disintegrated. And our grandparents used to give us the mercury from broken thermometers to play with.

When you think about it, it's only really in the last 150 years that we've come to understand the toxic nature of so many things; and remember as well that even in the 1950s, people were watching atomic bomb explosions protected only by sunglasses against the glare; tobacco was only found to be carcinogenic in the 60s, wasn't it? Or possibly the 50s...

Amazing really.

I'm going to have chips for lunch. Thanks MrsPotter.

Poor Beth

It was really great and totally unexpected - we went to have a mosey round the art collection and then there were all these realistic wax innards made centuries ago. Blew my mind.

And the Sanctuary museum is fascinating in its own right - full of models of ships made by seamen who have lived through a storm or a shipwreck and made a model of their ship in thanks. And then these mummies, looking like they just got shut in the room and died where they lay. Bizarrely brilliant. Oh, and there was a wedding going on in the church attached that we could see from the window next to the plague room. All a bit surreal.

Definitely worth a visit.

I did my PhD on an 18th c traveller and scientist. He died in his early 50s. Someone else who was writing about him reckoned his symptoms looked like heavy metal poisoning and pinned it on his experiments with mercury and cadmium. Looking at some of his letters to close friends and spending ages deciphering the bits that had been scrubbed out by Victorian owners of the letters, and translating the rude bits he had written in ancient Greek, I identified another cause of mercury exposure, however - he picked up syphilis on his Grand Tour and had mercury treatment for it.

And I am fairly certain that Scarlett never saw that David B sketch. Given that his career was buried by the late nineties and she is just a young nipper. Our interloper was just feeling spiteful I fear. Probably having a bad day.

yes, Jesus, it was - daft, hey!
And women would put deadly nightshade juice (belladonna) into their eyes to relax the iris, giving them larger pupils, hence "belladonna" = beautiful lady. I wonder if that actually killed any of them...

Mrs Potter, the Hello! and OK threads are over there, you've clearly got lost. Don't slam the door on your way out.

I think mercury DID actually cure syphilis, but only in very minute quantities. Easy to get it wrong

Yes, Elizabeth's lovely white, fair complexion was lead oxide based. I prefer Olay myself.

I've been on this thread, and following links from it, since 10 o'clock

The bodies may well have been alive for 'medical dissection' The sentence of hanging, drawing & quartering was carried out until the 19th century.

Oops, I can't remember now! Sorry, I'm useless. Scarlet fever? It was on a thread in Adult Fiction that kept popping into active convos a couple of days ago.

thumb - my dentist wouldn't let me have amalgam fillings when I said I intended to get pregnant, either. FWIW.

well, david b did do a sketch on the bills of mortality. I had no idea tbh that this meant nobody else could ever talk about it again

was it a lead powder that was in the make-up to make skin very white? cE1? mercury was used for many years in the treatment of syphallis i believe.

I remember spending many happy moments as a child perusing the list of mortalitys that was in the introduction of my parents copy of Pepyps Diary.
Also a very good (ficitonal) look at this era of history, including tha early days of the Royal College of Surgeons, Newton and Pepyps is The Baroque Cycle:
If its not baroque, don't fix it ahaha

Flippin' mercury - knocked out all the hatters because they used it to cure the beaver felt; fancy using it to treat any illnesses! and now they still allow it in dental amalgam because apparently that's ok. It probably is but I have my doubts. If it's that ok, why are they reluctant to drill out amalgam fillings while you're pregnant? (or maybe that was just my dentist).

I like the sound of the Book of Reportage

Coooo, mummified plague bodies. How deliciously grue Aye

I found out on a thread here that LM Alcott was treated with mercury and it might have killed her. It does seem scary how many things were treated with metals - why?!

I have one of those too, Stratters - well not an actual case, more a window shelf - my current read is "Béchamp or Pasteur?", a fascinating book about how Pasteur mostly plagiarised all his great "finds" but because he was patronised by Napoleon III, he was the one who got all the recognition. VERY interesting stuff. But not stuff you can read all at once.

Great thread.

A few years ago, I had some time to kill in Cagliari and ended up in the museum where they had wax models of the body (like the plastination stuff) made in about 1805.

And then, looking around the models of ships in the Museum attached to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Bonaria, we found ourselves peering into a glassed off room with mummified bodies of plague victims who died in the 17th Century. Still clothed.