Ways of Dying in 1665

Do they know why viruses disappear so suddenly after appearing like that? That's what they think the sweating sickness was, wasn't it?

wow, how awful ScatterChasse.
A twelve year old is a very long way from being full-grown, no wonder she was damaged by it.

I always felt sorry for Henry VII's mother, Margaret Beaufort. She had him at 12 (or 13 perhaps) and was so injured having him she couldn't have any more. I mean, imagine being sent off to be married and having children at that age .

I wonder why Catherine of Aragon and Arthur never had a proper wedding night. Surely he knew what he was supposed to do?!

it probably explains faith. You would have to believe there was more than this

That's a paradox, isn't it. Yes, faith must have been comforting in times when life was cheap, brutal and short. But the church - and the kings who led it - effectively suppressed medical research, branded it all witchcraft and destroyed existing repositories of medical knowledge. So the church provided comfort for the pain it created.

Not all of Queen Anne's pregnancies resulted in miscarriage:

"Queen Anne gave birth to 6 living children.
Of those 6, the 3 born in the 1690s, Mary, George and Charles, all died within 24 hours of birth.
Mary and Anne Sophia, born in 1685 and 1686, were healthy girls. They both died of smallpox in February 1687, within a few hours of each other.
Prince William, Duke of Gloucester ... was the only one of Queen Anne?s children to survive infancy ...
At the age of 11, William caught a fever and possibly pneumonia as a result, and died on 30th July 1700."

Source here

Fascinating thread.

Have never heard of Anne Boleyn publicly cursing H8 before her execution. And surely the bit where she claimed her daughter would be a great queen just drips with hindsight?

In fact, on the scaffold she said, 'I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never; and to me was he ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord.'

Anne's speech on the scaffold

Not uncommon for condemned people to praise the monarch who was sending them to their deaths, I believe. The idea was that this might make them less likely to go after your family too.

excellent thread.

'The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there'

do you think that it was because of the unimaginable trauma (ie to lose 17 children before adulthood) and commonplace extreme pain?
do yo think their mindsets were so different to ours, or not? it probably explains faith. You would have to believe there was more than this and a chance to see your loved ones again.

sorry bad typing bfing

I saw a programme on discovery channel about Queen Anne that said it was thought she had antiphospholopid (sticky blood) which meant her blood clotted in pregnancy causing the miscarriages. A simple course of aspirin would be prescribed today... Or heparin injections depending on your clotting levels. I got very excited about this as I have antiphospholopid & thanks to a great team was finally able to have 2 beautiful dds after miscarriages.

Oh, something else from a childhood visit to Lincoln Cathedral.

When Eleanor of Castile died nearby in the thirteenth century she was embalmed and her inside bits that they removed were buried in the cathedral, while the rest of her was taken to London.

A grave full of internal organs and nothing else.

Theres a big statue on top which disappointed me as a very literal child, I was expecting a image of the actual contents of the tomb.

R2, I gained one of the highest marks in our year for a history A level module because of that song.
we were studying Charles I, and were told that Cromwell rarely comes up, and it had been on the previous years paper, so don't waste time studying it.

Yeah, it was the compulsory question. People were crying in the exam. That song helped me remember enough dates to wing the question (it was a source based one) and come out with a very respectable 70/100.

It was William the first that 'exploded' but the reason was because of all the chaos after his death (which happened in what we now call France, he was Duke of Normandy after all) which meant that it took ages and ages to bury him by which time the body was very bloated and 'dripped black fluids' (I think it's orderic vitalis who describes this in his historia ecclesiastica) and then they tried to stuff it into a stone sarcophagus which was too small... so although obviously it was taken to mean all sorts by the chronicles, it really was just the natural reaction of body left out too long!

Just caught up this morning and marking my place...

Sixxxteeen Fiffty Eiiiight

Not fifty three.

Was listening to it at the time and was slightly distracted.

Talking of famous deaths Oliver Cromwell I think died of 'stone' a kidney/urinary infection that turned into septicaemia.

Thanks to I am unable to mentioned Oliver Cromwell without launching into the song (my A-level history teacher used it as a teaching method when we did the English Civil War(s)).

OOOOOOO-Liver Cromwell,
Lord Protector of England
Born in 1599
Died in Sixteeeen Fiffffty Three (September)

My sister said it was one of the rare occasions where she was glad that their English was so poor, that she wouldn't be able to give a proper explanation.

She dressed the wound & did an urgent referral to oncology - but she said it had to be terminal, as most of the breast was taken up with the tumour, with obvious nodules in the arm pit.

Ariel - you're posting just ahead of me! - yes I found that it was William the Conqueror whose stomach exploded.

Postbellum - that's really nasty, poor woman. :( And your sister too - she must have had troubles concealing her horror, no?

Oh William the Conqueror exploded too apparently. After a stomach wound went gangrenous.

I'd heard that about the exploding coffin too. Was it Edward IV? He was fat, randy glutton also.

Talking of coffins, Queen Anne's was square of course, because of her vast girth. Seventeen children and none survived childhood :(. I can't imagine hpw terrible that would have been

Fantastic thread. Gruesome & informative all at once!
The thing that always scares me, is how little pain relief there was. You'd have hideous diseases & nothing, other than alcohol to relieve the pain (until Victorian times & there was laudanum).
With regard to cankers, they were open sores, but apparently could sometimes be from cancer. So women would get a canker of the breast, which would either be from a chronically infected milk duct or also breast cancer, which had just got so huge that it had broken through the surface of the skin.

My sister who is a GP, had a lady come in once because of a pain in her breast. The lady had recently joined her daughter in the UK from Algeria. Once she had been unswathed from her layers of clothes, my sister was horrified to see that the poor lady had a huge tumour that had actually broken the surface of her skin. She said it was one of her more shocking GP moments.

Yes, I also found that list while googling, ariel - very interesting, especially the possibility of type II diabetes - uncontrolled diabetes/blood sugar levels can cause many of the symptoms, including the tempers, unreasonableness, mental degradation, gangrene in his feet, slow healing (thus exacerbating his ulcers).

Found a bit that said his coffin burst open but I'm sure I remember being taught in Junior school that it was his stomach - need to go and check some more...

'He liked his women small and subservient and adoring, stupid twat.'

this leads to an interesting reflection on the nature of historical certainty.

Q. Did H8 have syphilis?
A. We can't know for sure, other conditions might have caused the symptoms, some people think he did, others are not sure, etc etc

Q. Was H8 a stupid twat?
A. Yes.

Here are Henry's delightful symptoms:

The most famous doctors who attended Henry VIII were George Owen, M.D, Doctor Augustine and Doctor Butts. During his lifetime King Henry VIII suffered from the following health issues and illnesses:

In 1513 at the age of 22 he suffered from a bout of smallpox

In 1524 at the age of 33 he suffered the first of recurring attacks of malaria

In 1535 at the age of 44 King Henry VIII badly injured his leg in a jousting accident. 

Although the leg first appeared to have healed it reopened a few years later and became ulcerated. He was unable to take exercise and his weight heavily increased

    His height was six foot four inches

    His early armour showed a waist measurement of waist of about 34 to 36 inches indicating a weight of about 180 to 200 pounds

    His last set of armour showed a waist measurement of waist of about 58 to 60 inches indicating a weight of about 300 to 320 pounds

Eventually, both of his legs and feet became affected with ulcers

His increase in weight could also have been due to diabetes

He then suffered from insomnia, sore throats and migraine headaches

He suffered with some mental decline in later life exhibiting some paranoia, feelings of depression and loneliness and a terrible temper

He suffered from a series of strokes prior to his death possibly indicating circulatory problems and high blood pressure

His toes became gangrenous as ulcerations worsened and advanced.

Quite a catch, wasn't he?

I thought Henry VIII died of septicaemia from his gout - is that not right? And wasn't it him whose belly was supposed to have exploded?

Spores are capsules and can remain dormant for decades, until the right conditions/host comes along. Building anything on an anthrax site would be foolhardy at best, just in case.

Mould spores are dangerous as well - depending on what they are, if you inhale them you could become pretty ill. Think aspergillosis (farmers' lung), even though that's usually caught from recently mouldy hay/straw etc. Inhaling any mould spores is generally not the best idea if you can avoid them (although there are airborne micro-organisms/spores everywhere around us all the time...)

Most viruses need a host to survive for any length of time but they can hang around for a while on surfaces, usually only a few days though. But many infectious agents have other hosts that they can borrow/use while they wait for their main host to come along; or they actually need the other host as part of their lifecycle (many parasites, for e.g., need two hosts - tapeworms (pigs), schistosomes (water snails), malaria (anopheles mosquitoes) - it's a very interesting topic of study, parasitology! Well, all immunology, actually)